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The Brontes

Mrs. Ellis H.Chadwick

9-47

Photo by}

[Emery Walker.

Alleged portrait of Charlotte Bronte.

PRINTED BY SIR ISAAC PITMAN
& SONS, LTD., LONDON, BATH,
AND NEW YORK 1914

To THE. MEMORY

OF MY DAUGHTER,

ELSIE MILLER CHADWICK,

WHOSE BRIEF LIFE WAS SPENT

IN HAWORTH.

PREFACE

MY first copy of Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte was
sent to me from Ha worth, and some years afterwards fate
decreed that I should go to live on the edge of the glorious
moors, within bowshot of the Ha worth vicarage. It mattered
not to me that Mrs. Gaskell had described the moorland
village as bleak, wild, and desolate ; it was the home of the
Brontes, and therein lay its charm.

After living in Haworth for nearly two years, I had the
good fortune to reside for the next six years in two other
districts closely associated with the Brontes, on the borders
of the Shirley country, and within a pleasant walk of Wood-
house Grove. In those days — now nearly thirty years ago —
there were many who had known the famous family at the
Haworth parsonage, including Dr. Ingham, the medical
adviser to the Brontes ; the sexton's family ; and Mr. Wood,
the village carpenter, who never failed to tell visitors that
he made all the coffins for the Bronte family except Anne's.
Since those days, I have met many, in different parts of
England as well as in Brussels, who knew Charlotte and Emily
Bronte.

When opportunities offered I made repeated pilgrimages to
every Bronte shrine, both in England and abroad. To be a
devotee of the Brontes is to find an Open Sesame wherever
true literature is valued, and it is one of the pleasantest recol-
lections of my life to remember that in no single instance have
I met with a refusal when seeking permission to see the interiors
of houses and schools with which the Brontes have been con-
nected. It is impossible to adequately acknowledge the uni-
form kindness which, as a stranger, I have received. Several
who have so willingly helped me have passed away during
the writing of this book : Miss F. Wheelwright, of Kensington ;
Mrs. Ratcliffe, of Haworth ; and M. 1'Abbe Richardson, of
Brussels.

My thanks are due to Mr. Clement K. Shorter and Messrs.

vi PREFACE

Hodder and Stoughton for kind permission to quote from The
Brontes : Life and Letters and The Complete Poems of Emily
Bronte. In the study of these works I have found a wealth of
information which has enabled me to throw new light on several
controversial problems connected with the Brontes.

I am also indebted to the Rev. T. W. Story, M.A., of
Haworth ; Mr. W. Scruton, of Bradford ; and Mr. W. W. Yates,
of Dewsbury, for kindly allowing me to quote from their books.

For the generous assistance, by the loan of photographs,
letters and other documents, I am especially grateful to Mr.
and Mrs. J. J. Green, of Hastings; Dr. Heger, and Mdlle
de Bassompierre, of Brussels ; Miss White, of Banagher ; Lord
Shuttleworth, of Gawthorpe Hall, Burnley ; Mr. J. J. Stead,
of Heckmondwike ; Mr. J. Horsfall Turner, of Idle, Bradford ;
Mr. Fred Shuttleworth, of Haworth ; Mr. J. Walton Starkey,
of Woodhouse Grove ; and Mr. John Watkinson, of
Huddersfield — the Chairman of the Council of the Bronte
Society.

ESTHER ALICE CHADWICK.

West Brae,
Enfteld,

Middlesex.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE ........... v

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ......... xv

CHAPTER I

THE BRONTE IRISH ANCESTRY

1777-1802

THE ancestors of the Brontes — The claim that Ireland inspired the
Bronte novels — The Irish Brontes — Birthplace of Patrick Bronte —
His early training — Alice Bronte — Prunty, Brunty or Bronte —
Patrick Bronte enters St. John's College, Cambridge — His pride in
his Irish nationality. ........ 1

CHAPTER II
PATRICK BRONTE'S TRAINING FOR THE MINISTRY

CAMBRIDGE, 1802—1805

PATRICK BRONTE as a student at St. John's College — His industry and
success — Value of the scholarships he won — His ordination as deacon
by the Bishop of London and priest by the Bishop of Salisbury.
Curacy at Wethers field, 1806-1809

Patrick Bronte's first curacy — Wethersfield in Essex — The Vicar of
Wethersfield — Mary Burder — Patrick Bronte leaves Wethersfield.
Curacies at Wellington and Dewsbury, 1809-1811

His appointment as curate at Wellington in Shropshire — His next
curacy at Dewsbury Parish Church — The Vicar of Dewsbury —
Dewsbury in Patrick Bronte's time — References to Dewsbury in
Shirley — His appointment as incumbent of Hartshead Church —
Memorial tablet in Dewsbury Parish Church. . . . .15

CHAPTER III

THE REV. PATRICK BRONTE AT HARTSHEAD

1811-1815

THE village of Hartshead-cum-Clifton — St. Peter's Church, Hartshead —
The Nunnely Church in Shirley — The Rev. Hammond Roberson — ,
The Luddite riots — The Red House, Gomersal — Mary Taylor —
Apperley Bridge — The Woodhouse Grove Academy — The Rev.
John Fennell — Maria Branwell — Patrick Bronte's marriage in
Guiseley Church — Centenary anniversary of his wedding — His
love letters — Publication of his Cottage Poems — His second volume
of poems — The Rural Minstrel — He exchanges livings with the Rev.
Thomas Atkinson of Thornton, near Bradford . . . .26

CHAPTER IV

THE REV. PATRICK BRONTfe AT THORNTON

1815-1820

HAPPY days at Thornton — Mrs. Gaskell's references to Thornton —
Thornton parsonage — The Old Bell Chapel — St. James's Church —
Birth of Charlotte, Patrick, Emily and Anne Bronte — Memorial
tablet on the Thornton parsonage — Further publications by the
Rev. Patrick Bronte — Nancy and Sarah Garrs . . . .41

vii

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER V

HAWORTH

1820-1824

PAGE

THE Rev. Patrick Bronte offered the incumbency of Haworth by the
Vicar of Bradford — The trustees claim to share in the appointment —
The Rev. Samuel Redhead — Disorderly scenes in Haworth Church —
Mrs. Gaskell's account — Mr. Bronte's appointment as Vicar of
Haworth — Journey from Thornton to Haworth — The Haworth
parsonage — The Vicar's trials and difficulties — Haworth village —
The Haworth moors — Haworth customs — The villagers and the
publication of the Bronte novels — Changes at Haworth — Death of
Mrs. Bronte 49

CHAPTER VI

COWAN BRIDGE

JULY, 1824 — JUNE, 1825

THE hamlet of Cowan Bridge — The Clergy Daughters' School —
Memorial tablet — The Rev. W. Carus- Wilson — Mrs. Gaskell's
account — Reasons for sending the Bronte children to the school —
Miss Elizabeth Branwell — Death of Maria and Elizabeth Bronte —
Schools associated with the Brontes — School life at Cowan Bridge —
The school records — The Cove, Silverdale — Withdrawal of the children
from the school — Tunstall Church — Correspondence in the press
concerning Cowan Bridge School . . . . . .64

CHAPTER VII

HAWORTH

1825-1831

THE Bronte children return to Haworth — Their home life and education
— Tabitha Aykroyd — Early compositions by the Brontes — Sale of
autograph manuscripts — Dramatisation of stories . . . .82

CHAPTER VIII

DEWSBURY

1831-1832

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S journey from Haworth — Roe Head School —
Kirklees Hall — Ellen Nussey and Caroline Helstone — Mary Taylor
and Rose Yorke — Martha Taylor and Jessy Yorke — Miss Wooler
and Mrs. Pryor — Mary Taylor and Ellen Nussey . . . .92

CHAPTER IX

HAWORTH, ROE HEAD AND DEWSBURY MOOR

1832-1838

CONTENTS ix

PAGE

Nussey — The Rydings, Birstall — Ellen Nussey's visit to Haworth
— Branwell Bronte's visit to London — His life at Haworth — Charlotte
Bronte's return to Roe Head accompanied by Emily Bronte —
Uncongenial tasks — Emily Bronte returns to Haworth — Anne Bronte
takes Emily's place as a pupil at Roe Head — Anne's illness — Transfer
of Miss Wooler's school from Roe Head to Heald House, Dewsbury
Moor — Charlotte and Anne Bronte's return to Haworth — Charlotte
Bronte's correspondence with Southey. . . . . .101

CHAPTER X

EMILY BRONTE AT LAW HILL, SOUTHOWRAM

1836—1839

EMILY BRONTE appointed governess at Law Hill School — Lack of
training for her duties — Her account of school life — Her character —
The Misses Patchett — Law Hill School and neighbourhood — Poems
composed whilst at the school — Material and inspiration gained by
Emily's association with the school. . . . . . .122

CHAPTER XI

CHARLOTTE BRONTE* S OFFERS OF MARRIAGE
1839

ANNE BRONTE becomes a governess at Blake Hall, Mirfield — Agnes
Grey and Blake Hall — Charlotte Bronte's first offer of marriage—-
Her views on marriage — The Rev. Henry Nussey — a prototype of
St. John Rivers in Jane Eyre — His unfortunate love affairs —
Mr. Nussey's Diary — Charlotte Bronte's refusal of the offer —
Christmas time at the Haworth Vicarage — Charlotte Bronte becomes
a governess at Stonegappe — Mr. John Benson Sidgwick — Gateshead
Hall in Jane Eyre — She complains of her treatment at Stonegappe —
Mrs. Gaskell's Account — Charlotte Bronte visits Swarcliffe,
Harrogate — Norton Conyers and Thornfield Hall — Her second offer
of marriage — First visit to the sea — Easton and Bridlington —
Ellen Nussey's account of the holiday ...... 138

CHAPTER XII

BRANWELL BRONTE AND THE CURATES AT HAWORTH

1839-1842

BRANWELL BRONTE obtains an appointment as tutor — His journey to
Broughton-in-Furness — Account of his life at Broughton — Rev.
Patrick Bronte's mode of life at Haworth — Mr. Leyland's Bronte
Family — Branwell Bronte becomes a clerk near Halifax — Sowerby
Bridge and Luddenden Foot — His life as a railway clerk — Charlotte
Bronte's unflagging industry — The Curates at Haworth . . . 157

CHAPTER XIII

ANNE BRONTE

SCANT notice by Biographers — Her Education at Home — Her character
— Agnes Grey — Charlotte's solicitude for Anne — Her difficulties as
governess at Blake Hall — She obtains a situation as governess at
Thorpe Green — Branwell Bronte a tutor in the same family — Anne
leaves Thorpe Green — Wildfell Hall — Branwell's dismissal . .171

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XIV

1841
RAWDON (MARCH TO DECEMBER)

atRawHA S Hn}it6d ruange °f ^mplishments— Her experience**0*
at Rawdon— Advice from her employers— The village of Rawdon
Charlotte Bronte's lack of interest in children-The project ™~a
Bronte school— Letter from Mary Taylor— Proposal that Charing

&£%3%£f ~ ^ * %££$£%£ .

' ' ' • I/O

CHAPTER XV

LONDON

1842-1848

...... 191

CHAPTER XVI

BRUSSELS, 1842 (JANUARY TO NOVEMBER)

...... 199

CHAPTER XVII

M- AND MADAME HEGER

,„

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BRONTES' EXPERIENCE AT THE PENSIONNAT

CHAPTER XIX

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S SECOND YEAR AT BRUSSELS

explanations-Charlotte Brontes experienc" u°sed !n°rth'~ US

. 238

CONTENTS xi

CHAPTER XX

WHY CHARLOTTE BRONTE LEFT BRUSSELS SO ABRUPTLY

PAGE

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S life and Jane Eyre — Her picture of M. Heger
as portrayed in Villette — Mary Taylor's advice — Charlotte Bronte's
regard for M. Heger — View of love in Shirley and Jane Eyre —
Charlotte Bronte's conception of love — Her " irresistible impulse "
to return to Brussels and its punishment — Her novels as human
documents — Miss Winkworth and Paul Emanuel — The Rev. A. B.
Nicholls — Publication of Charlotte Bronte's letters to M. Heger
in The Times — Reason for the long delay — M. Heger's loyalty to
Charlotte Bronte. ... . .259

CHAPTER XXI

THE ATTEMPT TO EARN A LIVELIHOOD

1844-1845

FAILURE of the East Riding scheme for a School — The Bronte sisters
determine to open a school at the Vicarage — The prospectus — Causes
of the failure of the project — They turn to literature as a means of
livelihood — The Vicarage family—Charlotte Bronte's invitation to
Hathersage — Emily and Anne visit York — The Gondal Chronicles —
Hathersage and Jane Eyre — Marriage of the Rev. Henry Nussey —
Hathersage Village — Charlotte Bronte's return to Haworth . . 280

CHAPTER XXII

THE PUBLISHING VENTURE, 1845-1846

POEMS

SIMILARITY of Emily and Anne Bronte's literary taste — Emily Bronte
the moving spirit in literary work — Charlotte Bronte's introduction
to Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey — Emily Bronte's surpassing
genius — Collection of the Bronte poems for publication — Assumed
names of authors — Attempts to find a publisher — Cost of publication
— Publishing venture a financial failure — Reviews of the volume of
poems — Complete Poems of Emily Bronte ..... 298

CHAPTER XXIII

THE FIRST BRONTE NOVELS

1845-1847

SECRECY observed in writing the novels — The village postman nearly
discovers the secret — Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and The Pro-
fessor— Publishers' repeated refusal of The Professor — Why The
Professor was refused — Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey accepted
— Origin of many of Charlotte Bronte's characters in her novels —
Contrast between The Professor and Jane Eyre . . . .311

CHAPTER XXIV

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

AUTHORSHIP of the novel — Various claims examined — Charlotte Bronte's
testimony — Late recognition of Emily Bronte's genius — Swinburne's
opinion of the novel — M. Heger's influence on Emily Bronte — Poem
by Emily Bronte — Charlotte's discovery of some of Emily's poems —
Emily's position at home — Her workshop and material. . . .321

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXV

CHARLOTTE AND ANNE BRONTE* S VISIT TO LONDON
DEATH OF BRANWELL AND
EMILY BRONTE

PAGE

ANNE BRONTE and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall — Branwell Bronte and
Anne's second novel — Charlotte and Anne Bronte visit London —
They stay at the Chapter Coffee House — Interview with the publishers
— Visit to the Opera — Death of Branwell and Emily Bronte . . 355

CHAPTER XXVI

SHIRLEY

1848-1849

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S preparations for writing the story — Difficulties
in her way — The curates in Shirley — Charlotte Bronte and Mr. A. B.
Nicholls— Characters in the novel — Writing of the novel laid aside
owing to Anne Bronte's death — The story continued and completed
— Reception of Shirley — Mrs. Gaskell's first letter to Charlotte Bronte
— The curates in the story recognised and defended . . . 365

CHAPTER XXVII

DEATH OF ANNE BRONTE

1849

Jane Eyre and the Quarterly Review — Anne Bronte's illness —
Charlotte and Anne Bronte go to Scarborough, accompanied by Ellen
Nussey — The journey broken at York — Arrival at Scarborough —
Ellen Nussey's account of Anne Bronte's last hours — Funeral at
Scarborough — Inexplicable conduct of Mr. Bronte — Grave-stone in
St. Mary's Churchyard — Charlotte Bronte's return to Haworth . 378

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHARLOTTE BRONTE' S VISITS TO LONDON

1849-50

CHARLOTTE BRONTE visits London at the invitation of her publisher —
Her stay at Westbourne Place, Paddington — She dedicates the
second edition of Jane Eyre to Thackeray — Unfounded rumours
in consequence — Charlotte Bronte meets Thackeray and Miss
Martineau — She renews the acquaintance with the Wheelwright
family — Return to Haworth — Visit to Gawthorpe Hall — Her fifth
visit to London — A disputed portrait — Sue's story in the London
Journal — Kitty Bell and Jane Eyre — A Bronte manuscript bought
at a public auction in Brussels ....... 388

CHAPTER XXIX

CHARLOTTE BRONTE* S FIRST AND SECOND VISIT

TO THE ENGLISH LAKES

1850

CHARLOTTE BRONTE invited to Briery Close, Windermere — Her first
meeting with Mrs. Gaskell — Mrs. Gaskell's account — Visits to the
Arnolds of Fox How — Return to Haworth — Second visit to the Lake
District — She stays with Miss Martineau at Ambleside . . .415

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER XXX

CHARLOTTE BRONTfi'S SIXTH VISIT TO LONDON
1851

PAGE

CHARLOTTE BRONTE visits London to hear Thackeray lecture — Mr.
George Smith — Thackeray's lecture at Willis's Rooms — Charlotte
Bronte's annoyance at his reference to Jane Eyre — Meeting between
Thackeray and Charlotte Bronte at Gloucester Terrace — Thackeray's
second dinner party — The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park — Charlotte
Bronte sees Madame Rachel — Short visit to Mrs. Gaskell at Man-
chester— Return to Haworth — Visit to Scarborough — She writes
Villette — Difficulties with the third volume — Alterations in the
manuscript — She pays another visit to London to correct the proofs
of Villette — Reception of Villette — Price paid for her novels — Review
by Harriet Martineau — Mrs. Gaskell' s defence of Charlotte Bronte's
novels ........... 422

CHAPTER XXXI

REV. A. B. NICHOLLS

THE Haworth Curates — Mr. Bronte's partiality for Irish Curates —
Rumours of Charlotte Bronte's engagement to Mr. Nicholls — Mr.
Bronte refuses his consent — Mr. Nicholls leaves Haworth — Charlotte
Bronte visits Mrs. Gaskell — Her shyness with strangers — Ellen
Nussey's letters — Mrs. Gaskell pays her first visit to Haworth Vicarage
— A break in the Cornhill friendship — Correspondence between
Mr. Nicholls and Charlotte Bronte 446

CHAPTER XXXII

CHARLOTTE BRONTfi'S ENGAGEMENT, MARRIAGE,
AND DEATH

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S engagement to Mr. Nicholls — Marriage — Honey-
moon in Wales and Ireland — Mr. Bronte's strange conduct — Mr.
Nicholls is offered the living of Padiham — He remains at Haworth —
Charlotte Bronte as a clergyman's wife — Visit to Gawthorpe Hall —
Illness and death — Funeral at Haworth Church — Thackeray's
appreciation .......... 456

CHAPTER XXXIII

MEMORIALS

MBMORIAL tablets in Haworth Church — Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte
Bronte — Memorial tablet at Thornton — The Bronte Museum at
Haworth — The Bronte Falls — Memorial tablet in Dewsbury Parish
Church— Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery— The Bronte
Society 477

WORKS BY THE BRONTES 489

INDBX . 491

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ALLEGED PORTRAIT OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE . Frontispiece

(see p. 395)

facing
page

PATRICK BRONTE'S BIRTHPLACE, EMSDALE .... 6

WETHERSFIELD CHURCH 18

WOODHOUSE GROVE SCHOOL 34

THORNTON VICARAGE 44

HA WORTH CHURCH AND VICARAGE 54

MAIN STREET, HAWORTH 58

COWAN BRIDGE SCHOOL 66

MOORLAND ROAD, HAWORTH 84

ROE HEAD SCHOOL ........ 92

THE RED HOUSE, GOMERSAL 100

THE RYDINGS, BIRSTALL 108

THE BLACK BULL, HAWORTH 114

ANNE, EMILY, AND CHARLOTTE BRONTE . . . .116

LAW HILL, SOUTHOWRAM 126

STONEGAPPE, LOTHERSDALE 146

MR. HUDSON'S FARM, EASTON 154

REV. PATRICK BRONTfi, 1809 168

DO. DO. 1860 168

THE HEGER PROSPECTUS 190

HEGER PENSIONNAT, RUE D'lSABELLE .... 200

M. HEGER, 1886 214

M. HEGER'S GRAVE 222

MISS FRANCES WHEELWRIGHT 228

MDLLE DE BASSOMPIERRE 228

LETTER FROM M. HEGER TO REV. P. BRONTE . . . 236

MADAME HEGER 1886 252

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S LETTER TO M. HEGER . . . 266

HAND-BAG WORKED BY CHARLOTTE BRONTfi . . . 270

HATHERSAGE VICARAGE 296

THE WITHENS, HAWORTH MOORS 322

HAWORTH VICARAGE 348

OAKWELL HALL 368

INTERIOR OF OAKWELL HALL . .' . . . 370

xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

facing
pagt

DR. WHEELWRIGHT 388

MRS. WHEELWRIGHT 388

GAWTHORPE HALL 394

SIR JAMES K. SHUTTLEWORTH . . . . . 416

REV. A. B. NICHOLLS ....... 446

REV. A. B. NICHOLLS, BANAGHER, 1890 .... 466

THE BRONTE BRIDGE, HAWORTH MOORS .... 470

MISS L^ETITIA WHEELWRIGHT ...... 472

MISS ELLEN NUSSEY . . . . . . 472

CHARLOTTE BRONTE . 486

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF
THE BRONTES

CHAPTER I

THE BRONTE IRISH ANCESTRY

1777-1802

SEVERAL attempts have been made to retrace the steps of the
Rev. Patrick Bronte, the father of the famous authors of
Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, for the purpose of trying
to discover if Ireland held the secret of the passionate novels
written by Emily and Charlotte Bronte ; but this research
was not begun sufficiently early to meet with much chance of
success. If Mrs. Gaskell had crossed the Irish Sea, when she
was gathering the material for her Life of Charlotte Bronte, she
might possibly have been fortunate in obtaining some clue
to the ancestors of the Brontes, which might have helped her
to gauge the peculiar character of the famous sisters, whose
novels differed so much from any that had been written
previously.

Few novels have ever aroused so much curiosity with regard
to their origin as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The
scenes and characters in Jane Eyre have been traced to a certain
extent, but there is little or nothing that can claim to be Irish.
Ireland is mentioned but once, and then as the place where
Rochester tells Jane Eyre that he will secure a situation
for her when he marries Blanche Ingram. There is nothing

I— (220*)

9. IN Tf-IE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

in Wuthering Heights that can be called peculiarly Irish, and
it has not been proved that the foundation of the story owes
anything directly to Irish tales, which have gathered round the
names of the Brontes in Ireland.

The Bronte sisters wrote of places they had actually seen,
and as none of them had visited Ireland before they wrote their
novels, Irish life is not referred to at all, unless Charlotte's
sarcastic reference to Ireland and the Irish in Shirley may be
allowed to count. Here, it will be remembered, she designates
her father's native place as " the land of shamrocks and
potatoes," and she describes the Irish curate, Mr. Malone, as
" a tall, strongly-built personage, with real Irish legs and arms,
and a face as genuinely national : not the Milesian face — not
Daniel O'Connell's style, but the high-featured, North American-
Indian sort of visage, which belongs to a certain class of the
Irish gentry, and has a petrified and proud look, better suited
to the owner of an estate of slaves, than to the landlord of a
free peasantry." Neither the nationality nor the brogue of the
Irish curate, Malone, seems to have gained the respect of the
author of Shirley, which is somewhat surprising, since she was
the daughter of an Irish curate herself. " When Malone's
raillery became rather too offensive, which it soon did, they
joined in an attempt to turn the tables on him, by asking him
how many boys had shouted 'Irish Peter !' after him as he came
along the road that day (Malone's name was Peter — the Rev.
Peter Augustus Malone) ; requesting to be informed whether
it was the mode in Ireland for clergymen to carry loaded pistols
in their pockets, and a shillelagh in their hands, when they
made pastoral visits ; inquiring the signification of such words
as vele, firrum, helium, storrum (so Malone invariably pro-
nounced veil, firm, helm, storm), and employing such other
methods of retaliation as the innate refinement of their minds
suggested."

This incident was probably based upon Patrick Bronte's
habit of carrying a loaded pistol and stout walking-stick
in his early days when a curate at Dewsbury, for he was in
Yorkshire during the Luddite riots.

Dr. Wright, in his Brontes in Ireland, did his best to give

THE ANCESTORS OF THE BRONTES 3

Ireland the credit of being the background of the Bronte
novels, but there has been very little to confirm the stories
which he relates. It must, however, be recognised, that the
Celtic fire of the Irish race glows in the tales, and the Bronte"
sisters had the fierce Irish temperament, which revolts against
injustice and conventionality. Heredity must also claim its
full share in moulding the Bronte character, for there is no
doubt that the Rev. Patrick Bronte influenced his daughters
more than anyone else in their early days, and it was from him
that they inherited a love of literature. The books and
magazines which he provided, though strong meat for young
people, helped to make them mentally robust and imaginative,
even when mere children.

Although Ireland cannot claim to have inspired the Bronte*
novels directly, yet the father of the famous sisters deserves
more credit than it has been usual to accord to him. Much
of what he published was of Ireland and the Irish people,
and there is no doubt that he was in the habit of telling his
children stories and legends of his native country. He was
reared among Irish peasants and, in his day, " fairies, witches,
goblins, spectres, magic wells and caverns, and haunted dells"
were as real to the Irish peasant as any of the physical appear-
ances with which he was daily confronted. It is not then a
matter for wonder that the Bronte children coloured their
stories with their vivid imagination.

Emily Bronte was the most imaginative of the trio, and she
was always considered the most typically Irish of the family.
In some respects she resembled her father in build and
features — tall and lanky — " with a man's big stride, an oval
face, shifting eyes, beautiful brown hair, and a proud and
reserved manner."

The ancestors of Emily and Charlotte Bronte cannot be
traced beyond their settlement on the banks of the Boyne.

Every effort has been made to prove that the Bronte' sisters
came of a literary stock, though it is not possible to do that
without changing the Greek name of Bronte (which accounts
for Charlotte Bronte in her early days signing herself
Charles Thunder) to that of the Hibernian OTrunty, which is

4 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

now considered to be the original family name, though this
cannot be absolutely proved.

One of the most cherished items supposed to refer to the
Irish Brontes has been unearthed by Dr. Douglas Hyde,
who in 1895 published The Story of Early Gaelic Literature, in
which he mentions an old Irish tale contained in a manuscript
in his possession, written in 1763 by one Patrick O'Prunty,
whom he assumes to be an ancestor of Charlotte Bronte.
The romance is entitled The Adventures of the Son of Ice
Counsel. According to Dr. Douglas Hyde there is a colophon
on the last page in Irish, which invokes the blessing of the
reader, in honour of the Trinity and of the Virgin Mary, on the
author, Patrick O'Prunty. The tale tells of a fight which
continued " from the beginning of the night till the rising of
the sun in the morning, and was only just stopped, as
Diodorus says battles were, by the intervention of the bards."

This Patrick O'Prunty is assumed to be the elder brother
of Charlotte Bronte's grandfather, Hugh Bronte. In that
case he must have written his manuscript some fourteen years
before Patrick Bronte was born. That being so, it is somewhat
singular that Patrick Bronte did not know of it, for, if he had,
he would probably not only have told his children but also
Mrs. Gaskell, when she was interviewing him to gain particu-
lars of his early home and his forbears. It is well known that
Mrs. Gaskell got very little information about the Irish Brontes,
and she confessed that she was afraid both of Charlotte Bronte's
Irish father and her Irish husband, and consequently she did
not probe far, but was content with the scant information
which Patrick Bronte supplied. It must, however, be remem-
bered that Mr. Bronte at this time was nearly eighty years
old, and his memory was failing ; he was almost blind, so that,
if he knew of any tradition, the absence of documents or letters
referring to his early home would prevent him from proving
his points with any degree of satisfaction ; and, moreover,
it was the Life of his daughter that Mrs. Gaskell was writing,
so that the old man was justified in keeping his daughter's
biographer to the strict bounds of her subject.

Patrick O'Prunty, author of The Adventures of the Son of

THE IRISH BRONTES 5

Ice Counsel, judging by his colophon, was evidently a Roman
Catholic. On the other hand, Hugh Bronte appears to have
brought up all his children as Protestants, and Patrick Bronte
was ever a staunch defender of the Church of England, as was
his daughter Charlotte.

Old Alice Bronte maintained that the Bronte family had
always been Protestant, and she doubted if her mother at
any time had been a Roman Catholic, for all the Brontes
were bitter opponents of Roman Catholicism. It is strange
that, with their well-known hatred of Roman Catholics, Char-
lotte and Emily Bronte should have been sent to be educated
at a school in Brussels, which was under the care of Monsieur
and Madame Heger, who were very strict Roman Catholics.

That the thoughts of the Bronte girls often turned to Ire-
land is proved by a small manuscript, still in existence in
the Bronte Museum, which was written by Charlotte Bronte
when she was but thirteen years of age ; its title is An
Adventure in Ireland. As was common in many of the Irish
tales of that day, it tells of ghosts, and possibly it is based
on one of her father's Irish fire-side stories. At fourteen,
Charlotte Bronte wrote another fairy tale, The Adventures of
Ernest Alembert, which has since been published in Literary
Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century, by Sir W. Robertson
Nicoll. Instead of the usual title page, it has a kind of
colophon on the last page —

" The adventures of Ernest
Alembert. A Tale
By Charlotte Bronte
May the 25th,

1830."

The sixteen pages of this well-told fairy tale are stitched in a
cover of rough brown paper, and it is noticeable that Charlotte
Bronte does not use the double-dotted final in writing her
surname.

Devotees of the Brontes, in their eagerness to prove Charlotte
Bronte's descent from a literary ancestry, have said that
Patrick Bronte was named after his literary uncle, Patrick
O'Prunty, and that in consequence he struggled hard to become

6 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

an author who would add lustre to his family. However
desirable this may seem, it lacks all the elements of truth.
It is quite sufficient to know that Patrick Bronte was born
on St. Patrick's day, 17th March, 1777, and for those who are
interested in figures, it is said that a child born on a date which
contains so many sevens — seven being considered the perfect
number — as could be crowded into the actual date, was des-
tined to become famous. It has also been noted that Patrick
Bronte died on the seventh day of June, 1861. Both Patrick
Bronte and his daughter Charlotte were superstitious concerning
numbers, and Patrick was proud to remember that he took
his B.A. degree on 23rd April, 1806 — Shakespeare's accredited
birthday. His eldest daughter, Maria, was also christened on
23rd April, 1814. Charlotte Bronte and her life-long friend,
Ellen Nussey, never failed to remember that their respective
birthdays, one on 21st April, and the other on 22nd April,
were so near to that of Shakespeare as in one case to be possibly
the same date.

That Patrick Bronte was proud of his Christian name there
is no doubt, though in England it always pointed to the fact
that he was an Irishman. In those days Ireland was not
held in high esteem, especially by the inhabitants of Great
Britain. Patrick Bronte, however, gave his Christian name
to his only son, who was considered in his early days the genius
of the remarkable Bronte family. Though in his own home he
was always called by his second name, Branwell — his mother's
maiden name — yet everyone in Haworth knew him as Pat
Bronte, the surname being pronounced as one syllable ; others
referred to him as " the Vicar's Patrick," and, though all the
Bronte children were born in Yorkshire, they had no Yorkshire
blood in their veins, and were always known as the Irish
Parson's children.

There is little that is worthy of the name of a Bronte
shrine in Ireland to-day, though the district in which Patrick
Bronte spent his early years has not greatly changed. The
little thatched cabin in Emdale, County Down, in which Patrick
Bronte was born, has been demolished, and nothing definite
remains to mark the birthplace of the much maligned father

BIRTHPLACE OF PATRICK BRONTE 7

of the immortal Brontes. It was a lonely little cottage with
its mud floor and its two tiny rooms — one used as a bedroom
and the other as a kitchen and corn kiln ; the rent was said
to be sixpence a week.

Patrick Bronte was very reticent about his early Irish home,
and his poor relations. He told Mrs. Gaskell that he was a
native of Aghaderg, but this was not quite correct, as Emdale
is in the townland or parish of Drumballyroney-cum-Drumgoo-
land, which adjoins the parish of Aghaderg. It must be said,
however, that the parish boundary is not well defined, and
Patrick Bronte's memory in his old age may have been at fault.
The little cabin was on the Warrenpoint and Banbridge Road,
at right angles to the Newry and Rathfriland Road, and about
eight miles from Newry. Banbridge is still noted for its
linen manufacture. The tiny cabin in which Patrick Bronte
was born soon became too small for the growing family, and
a second house, about half a mile away, in the Lisnacreevy
Townland was taken, where all his brothers and sisters, except
the youngest, were born.

Patrick Bronte was the eldest of a family of ten — five boys
and five girls. He said that his father, Hugh Bronte, was a
small farmer, and that he was left an orphan at an early age.
He claimed that his ancestors had originally come from the
South of Ireland and had settled near Loughbrickland. There
was a tradition that Patrick Bronte's forbears, humble as they
were, had descended from an ancient family of good position.
Patrick Bronte always clung to this idea, and it is possible
that this suggested to Emily the remark of Ellen Dean to
Heathcliff in Withering Heights. " Were I in your place, I
would frame high notions of my birth ; and the thoughts of
what I was, should give me courage and dignity to support
the oppressions of a little farmer."

Of Patrick Bronte's mother little is known. It is clear,
however, that her eldest son regarded her with affection, for
he is credited with sending her twenty pounds the year after
he left Ireland, and he kept up the practice all her life. She
was known before her marriage as Alice McClory, " the prettiest
girl in County Down, with a smile that would charm a mad

8 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

bull." In Shirley, Charlotte Bronte assigns that magic
witchery to Shirley Keeldar, a character, she tells us, drawn
from her sister Emily, and supposed to represent her as she
would have been under the circumstances given in Shirley.

It is said that Emily Bronte resembled her paternal grand-
mother, as well as her father, for Patrick Bronte was tall and
thin, though his father, Hugh Bronte, was described by his
youngest daughter, Alice, as " not very tall and purty stout."
Whilst Emily was the most like her father, Charlotte and
Patrick Branwell Bronte were small in stature, like their
Cornish mother, but with much of the Irish temperament,
whilst the gentle Anne, the youngest child, was like her mother
both in mind and build — so thought Miss Branwell, their
aunt — and it was probably for this reason she was always
looked upon as the aunt's favourite. This was shown in
Miss Branwell's will, by which Anne received a valuable watch
and chain, with the trinkets attached, whilst Charlotte only got
a workbox, Emily a workbox and an ivory fan, and Branwell a
Japan dressing box, though Mrs. Gaskell makes the mistake of
saying that Branwell was left out of the will altogether.

Patrick Bronte's youngest sister, Alice Bronte, died on
15th January, 1891, at the age of ninety-four. She was inter-
viewed during her later years by several Bronte enthusiasts,
including the late Rev. Thomas Leyland, who said she liked
to talk to him of her eldest brother Patrick, who was twenty
years her senior. As he left Ireland for Cambridge when
she was only a girl of five, and only returned to his native
land once when she was a girl of eight, she knew very little
of him, except to regard him as the clever member of the family,
and that he was of a studious disposition, and loved reading.
She was proud of being a Bronte, and she delighted to talk
about the literary success of her clever nieces.

Patrick Bronte was first a hand-loom weaver, and it is said
that whilst weaving he might often have been seen with a book
propped up in front of him, trying to ply the shuttle and read
a little at the same time, just as in later days Emily Bronte
was accustomed to have a German book in front of her when
ironing in the kitchen at the Haworth parsonage.

PATRICK BRONTE'S EARLY TRAINING 9

Patrick Bronte's parents were poor, and so far as is known
they were quite illiterate, but he evidently got his first interest
in learning from them and from the Presbyterian minister.
When quite a boy, he had to earn his own living as a hand-
loom weaver. Hence his great interest in later days in the
hand-loom weavers of Yorkshire. He composed a poem which
was intended to stimulate and encourage those of his parish-
ioners who followed this form of employment. On the title
page of the Cottage Poems the first verse is printed —

" All you who turn the sturdy soil,
Or ply the loom with daily toil,
And lowly on, through life's turmoil

For scanty fare :
Attend : and gather richest spoil,

To sooth your care."

Patrick Bronte never forgot " the rock from which he was
hewn," and his early literary efforts were reminiscent of his
early days, when, to quote his poem,

" My food is but spare
And humble my cot."

At the first exhibition in the Bronte Museum at Haworth,
the Rev. J. B. Lusk, of Ballynaskeagh, lent a copy of a very
old calico backed arithmetic by Voster, of Dublin, dated 1789.
At this time Patrick Bronte would be a boy of twelve years
of age. Inside the book are the following inscriptions :
" Patrick Pruty's book, bought in the year 1795." The n
in Prunty has been omitted.

Patrick Prunty his book and pen.

Patrick Prunty his book and pen (in red ink).

Patrick Brunty, (in larger letters).

Patrick Prunty, (large handwriting).

There is a geography, now in the Bronte Museum, which
was printed in Dublin in 1795, and on page 129 is written "The
Revd. P. Bronte." There are also the names Walter Sellon
and Walsh Bront, the latter name appearing several times,
and in addition there is written, "Hugh Bronte His Book, in the
year 1803." Besides these are written on the inside of the cover
some remarks on Irish characteristics which conclude by

10 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

saying that the Irish are " violent in affection." Also in a
small copy of a New Testament is to be seen in faint writing
the signature Alice, or Allie Bronte, which seems to point
to the fact that it probably belonged to Patrick Bronte's
mother, who was known as Alice, Allie or Ayles Bronte, though,
according to the parish registers of Drumgooland, her name
was either Elinor, which appears three times in connection
with the baptism of three of her children, or Eleanor in three
other cases, whilst the surname is given as Brunty in every
case but one, when it is entered as Bruntee, the handwriting
probably being that of the minister or the parish clerk. All
this helps to prove that the original name was Prunty or
O'Prunty. Charlotte Bronte mentions a geography book
" lent by papa " to her sister Maria, which was 120 years old
in 1829.

As Patrick Bronte loved his books better than his hand-
loom, he decided early in his teens to be a teacher. This
meant much burning of the midnight oil — in his case a tiny
rush-light. It was owing to his pursuit of knowledge under
such unfavourable conditions that he injured his eyesight —
a source of much trouble and pain in later life. By much self-
denial, never allowing himself more than six hours sleep, he
managed to pass the qualifying examination as a teacher, and
at sixteen he was appointed master of Glascar Hill Presbyterian
School. This appointment he kept for some five years.

According to Dr. Wright, a Presbyterian stickit minister,
the Rev. David Harshaw, who had previously befriended
the young teacher, assisted him in various ways, and especially
by the loan of books. He was thus enabled to improve his
qualifications, and he succeeded in being appointed master
of the Church School at Drumballyroney.

Patrick Bronte was then a tall, handsome fellow of twenty-
one, and he appears in his younger days to have been particu-
larly fortunate in the guidance and help he obtained from
ministers. Until he was able to manage his own affairs, " he
hung on to the coat tails of a good minister," which, as Mrs.
Gaskell says, "is as wise a thing as any young man can do
in his youth."

DECIDES TO BE A CLERGYMAN 11

The Rev. Thomas Tighe, Rector of Drumballyroney, was
evidently much interested in young Bronte since he entrusted
to him the education of his own children, and it was probably
on the rector's advice that Patrick Bronte decided to become
a clergyman, first seeking to qualify for this office by entering
Cambridge University. Mrs. Gaskell says, " This proved no
little determination of will, and scorn of ridicule." Why
" scorn of ridicule " is not clear, for shortly after entering the
University he gained three scholarships and several prizes,
but he did not gain a scholarship before he entered Cambridge,
as several writers have affirmed, but saved a sum of money
and used it at Cambridge.

Although Patrick Bronte's children were born and reared
in Yorkshire, they were all noted for their Irish brogue. Mary
Taylor told Mrs. Gaskell that when she first met Charlotte
Bronte at Roe Head School, Dewsbury, she was struck with
her strong Irish accent.

The passionate revolt of the Irish race and their strenuous
struggle for freedom are evident in the Bronte novels, and there
is more of sadness than of joy in them. The violence of the
storm, the fury of intense passion, the weirdness of a moonlight
night, and the moaning of the wind across the moors appealed
to their Celtic nature.

The mother of the famous Bronte sisters, Maria Bran well,
a daughter of a respected Methodist from Penzance, has not
been proved to have been a true Celt, and it is just as well,
for a passionate nature such as Patrick Bronte possessed
would not have mated well with one equally fierce. The
youngest daughter — gentle, patient Anne — was most like her
mother, and her novels are very characteristic, lacking the
fire and passion of her sisters.

The Bronte shrines in Ireland are held in veneration, not
because of Patrick Bronte's fame, but because he was the father
of the famous novelists. The Bronte Glen, near Emdale,
and the surrounding neighbourhood are rich in Irish relics.

There is a poem entitled " The Irish Cabin " in Patrick Bronte's
first book, a small volume of poems, published in 1811. There
are now very few copies of this book extant : one is in the

12 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTfiS

Bronte Museum at Haworth, and another at Knutsford,
from which the following inscription in Patrick Bronte's
handwriting is copied.

" The gift of the author to his beloved sister, Miss Bran well,
as a small token of his affection and esteem.

" THORNTON, NR. BRADFORD,
" March 29th, 1816."

Patrick Bronte had a sincere affection for his humble Irish
home, and in this poem he writes —

" All peace, my dear cottage be thine !

Nor think that I'll treat you with scorn ;
Whoever reads verses of mine

Shall hear of the Cabin of Mourne ;
And had I but musical strains,

Though humble and mean in your station,
You should smile whilst the world remains,
The pride of the fair Irish Nation."

The very fact that Patrick Bronte published these poems,
reminiscent of his Irish home, shows how mistaken Mrs.
Gaskell was when she wrote that he dropped his Irish accent
on leaving Cambridge, and had no further intercourse with his
Irish relatives. She gives the impression that Mr. Bronte
was ashamed of his Irish origin, which was not the case. Even
to the day of his death he preferred Irish curates.

With the death in January, 1891, of Patrick Bronte's
youngest sister Alice, the last link with Patrick Bronte's
family was broken. Had it not been for the timely help of
friends and relatives, old Alice Bronte would have spent her
last days in poverty. When it was known that she was in
actual need, after all her brothers had died, there were many
who expected that the Rev. A. B. Nicholls would have allowed
her a small income, seeing that he got all the money that his
wife, Charlotte Bronte, left, and also the greater portion of
what Patrick Bronte left, which together amounted to nearly
£3,000. Added to this was the money he received from the
Bronte furniture. It was with the Brontes' money that Mr.
Nicholls was able to retire from preaching and settle as a
gentleman farmer. Miss Ellen Nussey was indignant that Mr.

DEATH OF ALICE BRONTE 13

Nicholls did not come to the aid of the last of the Bronte aunts,
and she also thought that Charlotte Bronte's publishers might
have allowed the old lady something, though it is not certain
that they were even approached on the matter. A former
friend of the Brontes in Ballynaskeagh, Dr. Caldwell of
Birmingham, who was always keenly interested in the Bronte
family, collected a sum of money for Alice Bronte's immediate
use. In 1882 he was also instrumental in securing for her an
annuity of twenty pounds from the Pargeter's Old Maids'
Charity Trustees, Birmingham, which allowance was continued
until her death.

Only one of Patrick Bronte's brothers is known to have
visited his relatives at Ha worth, but the tales told of the
castigation he administered to the reviewer of Jane Eyre in
the Quarterly Review are not true. County Down and Ha worth
were too far apart in those days, and neither the Vicar of
Ha worth nor his relatives had money to spare for long journeys.
Consequently, the Irish members of the Bronte family knew
less of their illustrious relatives than the friends in England,
and even to this day they know little except what is published.
A great grandchild of Sarah Bronte, the only sister of Patrick
Bronte who married, resided for some years at Oakenshaw,
near Bradford. There is also an Emily Bronte, a descendant
of one of Patrick Bronte's brothers, living in England to-day.
It has been said that Patrick Bronte had little regard for his
own native country, and that he was anxious to hide his
Irish nationality, but this cannot be substantiated, for in 1836
he published A Brief Treatise on the best time and mode of Bap-
tism, which was chiefly an answer to a tract issued by the
Baptist Minister at Ha worth. In this pamphlet, Patrick
Bronte says : " One thing, however, I think I have omitted.
You break some of your jokes on Irishmen. Do you not
know, that an Irishman is your lord and master ? Are you
not under the king's ministry ? And are they not under
O'Connell, an Irishman ? And do not you or your friends pay
him a yearly tribute under the title of rent ? And is not the
Duke of Wellington, the most famous, and the greatest of living
heroes, an Irishman ? And dare you, or your adherents,take

14 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

one political step of importance without trembling, lest it
should not meet the approbation of your allies in Ireland ?
Then, as an Irishman might say to you, refrain from your
balderdash at once, and candidly own your inferiority."

In The Maid of Killarney — the only novel ascribed to
Patrick Bronte — he describes the Irish as " free, humourous,
and designing ; their courage is sometimes rash, and their
liberality often prodigal : many of them are interesting and
original ; so that he who has once seen them will not easily
forget them, and will generally wish to see them again."

CHAPTER II
PATRICK BRONTE'S TRAINING FOR THE MINISTRY

Cambridge, 1802-1806

PATRICK BRONTE as a student at St. John's College — His industry and
success — Value of the scholarships he won — His ordination as
deacon by the Bishop of London and priest by the Bishop of
Salisbury.

Curacy at Wethersfield, 1806-1809

Patrick Bronte's first curacy — Wethersfield in Essex — The Vicar of
Wethersfield— Mary Burder— Patrick Bronte leaves Wethersfield.

Curacies at Wellington and Dewsbtiry, 1809-1811

DURING Patrick Bronte's nine years' experience as a teacher,
he saved enough to enable him to go to Cambridge, where, by
means of scholarships and as sizar or servitor, he was able
to be independent of help from anyone. He was probably
recommended to St. John's because the fees were very low,
and because he would be sure to find there others, like himself,
who could only obtain a University training by practising
the greatest frugality.

Whatever may be said of Patrick Bronte in later life, he was
most exemplary in his student days, working almost night and
day to improve himself, and showing a fine spirit of manly
independence.

By the courtesy of the Master of St. John's College, I am
allowed to copy the following particulars relating to Patrick
Bronte's residence at Cambridge.

The first entry is, " Patrick Branty, born in Ireland ; admitted
sizar 1st October, 1802 ; tutors Wood and Smith/' It is
supposed that the men supplied the details to the Registrar

16 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

of the College verbally and in person, and that the Irish brogue
led to the mistake. The butler kept the Residence Register,
in which appears Sizar Patrick Branty (erased) Bronte. First
day of residence, 3rd October, 1802 : kept by residence the
following Terms—

1802 Michaelmas.

1803 Lent, Easter, Michaelmas.

1804 Lent, Easter, Michaelmas.

1805 Lent, Easter, Michaelmas.

1806 Lent.

Admitted B.A. 23rd April, 1806.

In the Register of Scholars and Exhibitions, opposite the
name of Patrick Bronte appears —

Hare Exhibition February, 1803.

19th March, 1804.
March, 1805.
There is no mention of an Exhibition in 1806.

The Hare Exhibitioners received amongst them the annual
value of the Rectorial Tithe of Cherry Marham, Norfolk. The
rent was £200 which, if they shared equally, would give
£6 6s. 8d. as the value of each exhibition.

At Midsummer, 1805, Patrick Bronte was elected a Dr.
Goodman Exhibitioner ; the value of the exhibition was
£\ 17s. 6d., and he appears to have held it only one year.

From Christmas, 1803, to Christmas, 1807, he held one of
the Duchess of Suffolk's exhibitions of the value of £1 3s. 4d.

It is difficult to see how he managed to pay his mother £20 a
year, during his stay at Cambridge, as stated by Dr. Wright,
unless he made a fair income by acting as coach to other
students. The three scholarships only brought him the sum
of £9 7s. 4d. per annum, and it is evident that Dr. Wright did
not know their small value, when he wrote in his Brontes
in Ireland : " Bronte's savings were ample to carry him over
his first few months at Cambridge, and the Hare, Suffolk and
Goodman Exhibitions were quite sufficient afterwards for all
his wants as a student." It is to be remembered that Patrick

PATRICK BRONTE AT CAMBRIDGE 17

Bronte was a sizar, or servitor, which involved status and
the payment of very reduced fees both to the College and the
University.

In the Registers of the Bishop of London is the following —

" Patrick Bronte, A.B., of St. John's College, Cambridge,
ordained Deacon 10th August, 1806, in the Chapel at Fulham.

" Patrick Bronte has letters dimissory dated 19th December,
1807, to be ordained Priest by the Bishop of Salisbury 21st
December, 1807."

Whilst at college, Patrick Bronte, in addition to his scholar-
ship and exhibitions, gained two prizes at least, consisting of
two quarto copies of Homer and Horace. " Homeri Ilias.
Graece et Latine. Samuel Clarke, S.T.P. Impensis Jacobi et
Johannis Knapton, in Ccemeterio D. Pauli, mdccxxix." This
book bears the College Arms on the cover, and has the following
inscription : — " My prize book for always having kept in the
first class at St. John's College, Cambridge. P. Bronte, A.B.
To be retained semper.

" Horatius Flaccus, Rich. Bentleii. Amstelodami, 1728.
" Prize obtained by Rev. Patrick Bronte, St. John's College."

The two volumes were in the possession of the late Dr.
Dobie, of Keighley, who purchased them from Mrs. Ratcliffe
(Tabitha Brown), sister of Martha Brown, the servant at the
old Ha worth Vicarage. Like Robertson of Brighton, Patrick
Bronte seems to have had a leaning towards a military life,
and at St. John's College he joined the Volunteer Corps, and
boasted that he drilled side by side with the grandfather of
the present Duke of Devonshire and with Lord Palmerston.
He delighted afterwards in telling how the Cambridge
Volunteers practised to resist the invasion of England by the
French. In later days he corresponded with Lord Palmerston,
but the friendship, if ever it amounted to that, was never
kept up. Another student at St. John's at that time was
Henry Kirk White, the young poet.

After his ordination, he returned to his old home in County
Down, and his sister Alice was fond of telling that he preached
one Sunday at Ballyroney church to a crowded congregation

2 — (22OO)

18 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

" with nothing in his hands," that is without using a manuscript,
which in those days was considered a great feat. There is
no record that he ever visited his Alma Mater again, but soon
after leaving Cambridge he secured a curacy at Wethersfield in
Essex, where his marked Irish brogue betrayed his nationality.

That Patrick Bronte took his high vocation seriously and
in the true spirit of devotion there is no doubt. One of his
poems, written after he left Cambridge, is entitled " An Epistle
to a Young Clergyman," and is prefaced by the text, " Study
to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth
not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth/*

The seventh verse reads —

" Dare not, like some, to mince the matter —
Nor dazzling tropes and figures scatter,
Nor coarsely speak, nor basely flatter,

Nor grovelling go :

But let plain truths, as Life's pure water,
Pellucid flow."

There are sixteen stanzas altogether. Though Patrick
Bronte wrote many verses, he would scarcely rank as a poet,
but the lines are interesting because they reveal the spirit of a
truly Christian man, anxious to dedicate himself to the work
of the ministry of the Gospel.

Mr. Bronte's first curacy was at Wethersfield in Essex, a
south country village, where the soft speech of the Southerner
was in great contrast to the young Irishman's brogue.

A hundred and seven years ago, Wethersfield, with its
copper spired church dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, was a
small village, with a few cottages here and there, and a number
of country mansions, where the county families lived. It is
little more than that to-day, for Wethersfield has changed less
than most villages during the last century. Even now, it is
almost as difficult to approach as in Patrick Bronte's day, for
the nearest station, Braintree, is seven miles away. Cut off
by the network of railways, it is just one of those old world
places, which seem never to have awakened from their long
sleep. The people, kind and hospitable, are employed mainly
in raising garden seeds. Very rarely wandering far from their

FIRST CURACY AT WETHERSFIELD 19

home, their isolation gives them something of the sterner
independence of the North, and the countryside is typical of
the hilly part of the county, so that Patrick Bronte must have
rejoiced in the beauty of this English village, where he began
the serious business of life, full of hope and with an Irishman's
determination to succeed.

It was a favourable place in which to start his ministerial
life, for the Vicar, the Rev. Joseph Jowett — a Yorkshireman —
was Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge, and was a
non-resident vicar of Wethersfield, so that much of the work
of the parish devolved on the young handsome curate. In
the old church register may be seen Patrick Bronte's first
signature, which was written on 12th October, 1806, on the
occasion of a baptism.

Patrick Bronte stayed in this small agricultural village about
two years, the last entry in his own handwriting being 1st
January, 1809, when he evidently officiated at a funeral.
It was not until 1887 that the information concerning his
residence at Wethersfield was brought to light by Mr. Augustine
Birrell. In his Monograph on Charlotte Bronte in the " Great
Writers' Series," he gathered together some interesting par-
ticulars from the daughter of Mary Burder, Patrick Bronte's
sweetheart at Wethersfield.

This daughter, Mrs. Lowe, wrote an account for Mr. Birrell
of her mother's love story, which adds much interest to Patrick
Bronte's residence at Wethersfield, but the early love letters
are not forthcoming.

It is, however, quite certain that the love story of the young
curate and the pretty niece of his landlady would never have
been published had not Patrick Bronte become the father of
the famous novelists. It is said that the young curate, on his
arrival in the village, found lodgings in a house opposite the
church, where lived Miss Mildred Davy, whose niece, Mary
Burder, " a pretty lassie of eighteen, with blue eyes and brown
curls/' sometimes came from her home, known as " The
Broad " — a large, old-fashioned farm-house across the fields.
On one occasion, having brought a present of game for her
aunt, she was busy in the kitchen with her sleeves rolled up,

20 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

winding up the roasting-jack, when the new curate, seeing her
thus occupied exclaimed, as told by her daughter, " Heaven
bless thee ! Thou hast the sweetest face I ever look'd on."
In the Cottage Poems, published by Patrick Bronte in 1811,
are "Verses sent to a Lady on her Birthday/' and from the
following verse, which gives the lady's age as eighteen, it is
probable that the poem was addressed to Mary Burder. After
speaking of ' Your rosy health and looks benign " he
writes —

" Behold, how thievish time has been !
Full eighteen summers you have seen,

And yet they seem a day !
Whole years, collected in time's glass,
In silent lapse, how soon they pass,

And steal your life away ! "

It was a case of " love at first sight," and Mary was often
to be found at her aunt's home, where the course of true
love ran smoothly for a time. Mary's relatives, however,
were prejudiced against an Irishman, and both Mary and her
kinsfolk were disappointed because they could not obtain from
Patrick Bronte himself any particulars of his " ain folk." The
consequence was that they treated him with suspicion, and it
was arranged that one of Mary's uncles living at a distance
should invite her to stay with him for some time ; and letters
sent to her by her lover were intercepted. When Mary Burder
returned to her home, the love-sick curate had fled, after
being compelled to return her letters. It is said that he left
his portrait inscribed with the words, " Mary; you have torn
the heart ; spare the face." Fourteen years afterwards she
received a letter in the handwriting she once treasured. It
was from the Rev. Patrick Bronte, asking her to become his
second wife and the stepmother to his six motherless bairns,
but she declined, and a year afterwards married the minister
at the Dissenting Chapel at Wethersfield, the Rev. Peter Sibree.

On 1st January, 1809, Patrick Bronte shook the dust off
his feet and left Wethersfield.

For many years there was a hiatus in the calendar of Patrick
Bronte's life, so far as it was generally known. The Church

MARY BURDER 21

Register at Wethersfield shows that he ceased to be curate
there in January, 1809, and the date of his entering upon his
duties as curate at Dewsbury in December of the same year
is fixed by an entry of marriage on the llth of the month, in
Dewsbury Parish Church register, signed by Patrick Bronte.

There is little to record, but it is now known that he spent
the interval between January and December of the year 1809,
in serving as curate at Wellington, near Shrewsbury. Wel-
lington was far from being so congenial as Wethersfield ; it
was a small town given to mining, and Patrick Bronte only
stayed one year.

In the matriculation register of St. John's College, Cambridge,
for the year 1802, appears the name of John Nunn, written in
a bold, round hand, and standing next but one in order to
Patrick Bronte's rather effeminate signature. Mr. Nunn became
a curate at Shrewsbury, and, after he left college, he seems
to have kept up a regular correspondence with Patrick Bronte.
It is probable that, when he heard of his friend's troubles
at Wethersfield, he advised him to apply for the vacant curacy
at Wellington. The vicar was the Rev. John Eyton, whose
son, Robert William Eyton, was an antiquary and historian.

It is said that Patrick Bronte quarrelled with his old friend
John Nunn, on hearing that he was about to be married, for
the Wellington curate had arrived at very definite conclusions
with regard to the subject of marriage after his experience
at Wethersfield. It is surely the irony of fate which
gave to Patrick Bronte the duty of joining in matrimony
many of the couples married at Dewsbury Parish Church —
his next curacy — for, on examining the register of this old
church, which dates from the year 1538, it may be seen that
Mr. Bronte officiated at most of the weddings from 1809 to 181 1.

It is interesting to know that it was during his curacy at
Wellington that he first became acquainted with the Rev.
William Morgan, who was his fellow curate, and afterwards
his cousin by marriage.

It is now more than a century since Patrick Bronte went to
be curate to the Rev. John Buckworth, M.A., at Dewsbury
Parish Church. Young Bronte was fortunate in his vicars,

22 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

and to them, perhaps, may be traced his anxiety to become
an accredited author, and even his famous daughters, who wrote
so much before they succeeded in publishing anything, may
owe something to their father's literary vicars. The Rev.
Dr. Jowett, of Wethersfield, published at least one volume of
sermons, and Mr. Buckworth was known as a capable hymn-
writer, and the author of a volume of Devotional Discourses
for the use of families. A copy of this work was included
among Patrick Bronte's books sold in 1907, and it bears the
inscription : " To the Rev. P. Bronte, A.M. A Testimonial
of Sincere Esteem from the Author."

The neighbourhood of Dewsbury, like many other industrial
centres, has lost most of the charm it once possessed. It is
now a busy woollen manufacturing district, but in Patrick
Bronte's days it was a typical Yorkshire country town. The
winding Calder, upon whose banks, according to tradition,
Paulinus stood and planted the Gospel Standard in 627, is
now a muddy, polluted stream. Even when Charlotte Bronte
was at school at Dewsbury, it was a picturesque rural spot,
rich with sylvan beauty, the heights of Crackenedge and
Westboro' crowned with woods, and little farmsteads dotted
here and there, whilst below were grassy meadows and little
cottages, each with its weaving shed situate in the valley
through which the then clear Calder wended its way.

Dewsbury was a place to revel in, so far as its scenery went,
but Patrick Bronte arrived at a troublesome time, just before
the Luddite riots, and the people of the district were lawless
and coarse. There was plenty for the curate to do with such
a population as he found in Dewsbury, for bull-baiting, badger-
baiting and dog-fighting were the common amusements of many
of the lower classes, and such sports generally ended in drunken
brawls and brutal fights. The vicar — the Rev. John Buck-
worth — supposed by some to be the original of Dr. Boultby in
Shirley, though others assume that the Rev William Morgan,
Patrick Bronte's brother-in-law, was the prototype — did not
fail to denounce this lawlessness from his pulpit, as the testimony
of his printed sermons proves. The Yorkshire temperament
and pugnacity found its match in the young Irish curate, and

CURACY AT DEWSBURY 23

several stories are told of his prowess in those days, the most
commonly remembered having found its way into his daugh-
ter's novel, Shirley, where she gives a graphic description in
Chapter XVII of a Sunday School procession on Whit-
Monday, though she need not have gone further than Haworth
for a parallel incident, except that she mentions that " the
fat Dissenter," who gave out the hymn, was left sitting in the
ditch. The Dewsbury story differs slightly from the one
associated with the history of Haworth. At Dewsbury, it is
said that the Sunday School procession, on the anniversary
day, was on its way to sing on the village green, when a half-
drunken man attempted to bar the way. The young curate
rushed forward, seized the man by the collar, and threw him
into the ditch on the road-side, after which the procession
continued in peace. On its return, the man, somewhat sobered,
and resenting the indignity to which he had been subjected,
waited to " wallop the parson." He, however, thought
" discretion to be the better part of valour," when he saw the
tall, athletic curate at the head of the procession, and he wisely
made no attempt to interfere with its progress.

Another tale which has lingered in the Calder Valley tells of
the parish bell-ringers practising on the Sunday morning for
a forthcoming contest, and how the young curate rushed up
the belfry stairs with his shillelagh in his hand, and drove
them all out with a stern rebuke ; but perhaps the best known
story is of the rescue of a boy from drowning in the river
Calder. Mr. Bronte jumped into the stream in his clerical
attire, and after rescuing the boy, took him home and saw
that he was attended to, before he thought of his own wet
garments.

Mr. W. W. Yates, in his book The Father of the Brontes, tells us
that Patrick Bronte, when in Dewsbury, resided in the old
vicarage, close by the church, having his own rooms. The
house has since been demolished. Descendants of the old
inhabitants, who knew him, speak of Mr. Bronte as not being
very sociable, but he did his work well, and was considered
a good preacher, taking a special interest in the Sunday Schools.
The frugality of his early life in Ireland followed him into

24 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Yorkshire, and he is said to have lived mostly on oatmeal
porridge and potatoes, with a dumpling by way of dessert
after dinner. If report is to be credited, he wore a blue linen
frock coat, and carried a shillelagh, like a true son of Erin.
His vicar had an illness during his curacy, and the young
Irishman felt constrained to send his sympathy in verse, and
no fewer than twenty-nine six-line stanzas found their way
to the vicar. It is not poetry, but it satisfied Patrick Bronte,
and must have amused the recipient. One verse reads—

" May rosy Health with speed return,
And all your wonted ardour burn,
And sickness buried in his urn

Sleep many years !
So, countless friends who loudly mourn,

Shall dry their tears ! "

Patrick Bronte's reason for leaving Dewsbury is one which
showed his Irish independence. It is said that, having been
caught in a thunderstorm, he requested the vicar to take his
place at the evening service, when one of the church officials
remarked, " What ! keep a dog and bark himself." This so
annoyed Patrick Bronte that he decided to resign his curacy.
This apparently did not interfere with his friendly relations
with the Vicar, for the living of Hartshead Church, a short
distance away, was vacant at this time, and, as Mr. Buck worth
had the right of presentation, he rewarded his hard-working
curate, who thus became incumbent of Hartshead in 1811.

In the Hartshead Church register, the first entry made by
the new vicar is on 3rd March, 1811, where he signs himself
" Patrick Bronte, minister," and on the llth of March in the
same year he signs himself in the Dewsbury church register,
" P. Bronte, curate,"

He had been a curate for six years, and he now realised his
ambition in securing a church of his own. That the " Irish
curate " had made a name for himself is evidenced by the fact
that members of the Dewsbury church often walked over
to Hartshead to hear him preach. He had, what was con-
sidered at that time a rare accomplishment, the gift of being

DEWSBURY PARISH CHURCH 25

able to preach without reference to his manuscript, which
counted for much among the Yorkshire folk. In January,
1899, a brass plate was unveiled in Dewsbury Parish Church
to the memory of Patrick Bronte with the following inscription —

" IN MEMORY OF

THE REVEREND PATRICK BRONTE B.A.
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE
BORN AT EMDALE COUNTY DOWN

ST. PATRICK'S DAY 1777
DIED AT HAWORTH PARSONAGE

JUNE 7TH, 1861

CURATE OF WETHERSFIELD ESSEX 1806-1809

WELLINGTON 1809. DEWSBURY 1809-1811

INCUMBENT OF HARTSHEAD 1811-1815

THORNTON NEAR BRADFORD 1813-1820

HAWORTH 1820-1861

ERECTED BY ADMIRERS OF HIM AND HIS TALENTED
DAUGHTERS CHARLOTTE, EMILY AND ANNE BRONTE."

Had he not been the father of the famous novelists, it is
certain his memory would not have been thus honoured.

Dewsbury figures in Shirley as Whinbury. It was noted
for its Sunday Schools, which were established even before
the movement by Robert Raikes. Twenty -five years after
Patrick Bronte left Dewsbury, his daughter Charlotte came to
live in the parish, being then twenty years of age. She had
accepted the appointment of governess in Miss Wooler's
school, which had just been transferred from Roe Head,
Mirfield, to Heald's House, at the top of Dewsbury Moor.
Whilst here, she attended the Dewsbury Parish Church, where
her father had formerly been curate. Some of the older
inhabitants used to speak of her as a shy little person, very
short and dumpy, but with very expressive eyes and a most
attentive worshipper in church. It was whilst teaching there
that she had a bad attack of hypochondria, and the doctor
told her, as she valued her life, to leave Dewsbury and get home
to Haworth. In Villette she mentions this serious attack,
connecting it with Lucy Snowe, and in one of her letters she
speaks of Dewsbury as " a poisoned place for me."

CHAPTER III

THE REV. PATRICK BRONTE AT HARTSHEAD
1811-1815

THE village of Hartshead-cum-Clif ton — St. Peter's Church, Hartshead —
The Nunnely Church in Shirley — The Rev. Hammond Roberson —
The Luddite riots — The Red House, Gomersal — Mary Taylor —
Apperley Bridge— The Woodhouse Grove Academy— The Rev.
John Fennell — Maria Branwell — Patrick Bronte's marriage in
Guiseley Church — Centenary anniversary of his wedding — His
love letters — Publication of his Cottage Poems — His second volume
of poems — The Rural Minstrel — He exchanges livings with the Rev.
Thomas Atkinson of Thornton, near Bradford.

HARTSHEAD-CUM-CLIFTON is about four miles from Dewsbury,
so that Patrick Bronte did not find much difference either in
the type of people or in the district after he left Dewsbury.
Hartshead Church was in the same parish, and is dedicated
to St. Peter. It is known in Shirley as Nunnely Church,
and is beautifully situated on a hill overlooking the valley of
the Calder. Near the church gates are the old stocks, which
were often in use in Patrick Bronte's days. The church,
though altered and renovated since Mr. Bronte's time, still
retains its ancient appearance. The square tower, the oldest
remaining portion of the church, was formerly surmounted
by an old, weatherbeaten ash tree, which had its roots in the
roof of the tower. In the vestry are portraits of the Rev.
Patrick Bronte, the Rev. Thomas Atkinson, who followed
Mr. Bronte and was the godfather of Charlotte Bronte, and
his successor, the Rev. Thomas King.

The registers of the church go as far back as 1612. They
have lately been of service to the old inhabitants who wished
to claim their old-age pension. In addition to the signature
of Patrick Bronte there is to be seen the certificate of baptism
of Patrick Bronte's eldest child, Maria Bronte, who was born
in 1813, but not christened until 23rd April, 1814, Shakespeare's
birthday, and the anniversary of Mr. Bronte's Degree day at

REV. HAMMOND ROBERSON 27

Cambridge. The christening ceremony was performed, as
the register shows, by Patrick Bronte's relative, the Rev.
William Morgan, of Bradford Parish Church.

Patrick Bronte found lodgings at a farm, known in his day
as Lousey Thorn, but now called by the more euphonious title
of Thorn Bush Farm. The tenants of the farm, when he stayed
there, were Mr. and Mrs. Bedford, who had at one time been
servants at Kirklees Hall. According to the church register, Mr.
Bronte entered on his duties at St. Peter's Church, Hartshead,
on March 3rd, 1811, and not in July, as has been frequently
stated, for there is an entry in March signed — Patrick Bronte,
minister. The new incumbent had been preceded some ten
years previously by the noted Rev. Hammond Roberson, M.A.,
a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, who had also been
one of Patrick Bronte's predecessors as curate of Dewsbury
Parish Church. Mr. Roberson, in many ways, resembled
Patrick Bronte, for he was a bold and fearless preacher, with
a strong personality, a stalwart Tory of the old school, a man
of indomitable will, and self-sacrificing and generous in his
nature. After resigning his curacy at Dewsbury, he started a
boys' school, renting for the purpose Squirrel's Hall on Dews-
bury Moor. He afterwards transferred the school to Heald's
Hall, and such was his success that he saved enough to enable
him to build Liversedge Church, which cost over £7,000, and
where he became vicar in 1816. Charlotte Bronte has por-
trayed him in Shirley as Parson Heist one, " the old Cossack,"
as she calls him, but he must have resembled her father very
much, for those who knew Patrick Bronte in later days recog-
nised him in the delineation of Mr. Helstone ; no doubt some-
thing from both clergymen helped to build up the character.
Charlotte Bronte, in a letter to Mr. Williams, says that she only
saw the original of Mr. Helstone once when she was a girl of
ten, at the consecration of a church on September 4th, 1827,
which Ellen Nussey referred to as St. John's on Dewsbury
Moor.

The description given in Shirley of Mr. Helstone — the clerical
Cossack — fits Mr. Roberson.

" He was not diabolical at all. The evil simply was— he had

28 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

missed his vocation : he should have been a soldier, and circum-
stances had made him a priest. For the rest he was a con-
scientious, hard-headed, hard-handed, brave, stern, implacable,
faithful little man : a man almost without sympathy, ungentle,
prejudiced, and rigid : but a man true to principle — honourable,
sagacious, and sincere."

Mr. Roberson was building his church at Liversedge at the
time that Patrick Bronte was incumbent of Hartshead, and he
was a prominent character during the Luddite riots, an account
of which Charlotte Bronte heard from her father and the people
in the neighbourhood when she came to live there. Mrs.
Gaskell gives a very good account of Mr. Roberson, of whom
she heard much when visiting Miss Wooler and Ellen Nussey.
The more eccentric the character, the more Mrs. Gaskell
enjoyed writing about it.

Heald's Hall, the residence of Hammond Roberson, was the
largest house in the neighbourhood, and must not be confused
with Heald's House, where Charlotte Bronte was teacher
with Miss Wooler. In the Liversedge church is a stained -
glass window, erected to the memory of Hammond Roberson,
with an inscription, " To the glory of God and in memory of
the Rev. Hammond Roberson, M.A. ; founder of this church
in 1816, and its first incumbent, who died August, 1841, aged
84 years/' In the adjoining graveyard is a very small grave-
stone, about half-a-yard high, with just the name, age, and date
of burial. The vicar advocated one small gravestone to each
person, and he insisted on all stones being uniform. It is
said that one parishioner erected a head-stone larger than the
others, and the vicar had it taken up and thrown into the hollow
at the bottom of the churchyard.

Another grave in the Liversedge churchyard which merits
attention is that of William Cartwright, the original of Robert
Gerard Moore, of Shirley ; on it is a simple inscription,
"William Cartwright of Rawfolds, died 15th April, 1839,
aged 64 years."

In the year after Mr. Bronte became incumbent of Hartshead,
the whole of the West Riding of Yorkshire was in constant
turmoil. Sixty-six persons were tried at York for various

THE LUDDITE RIOTS 29

offences connected with the Luddite rising against the intro-
duction of machinery. Seventeen were executed, and six were
transported for seven years. The two big mill-owners in the
Hartshead district — Cartwright of Rawfolds, Liversedge, and
Horsfall of Marsden — were considered by the workpeople to be
the chief offenders in the district, for both had decided to stock
their mills with machinery. Parson Roberson took the side of
the mill-owners, and had no sympathy with the workpeople,
preaching from the pulpit against the Luddites, and doing
all he could to make the workers bend to their employers.
Mr. Bronte also took the same view, and Mary Taylor, writing
to Mrs. Gaskell in 1857 from New Zealand, acknowledging
a copy of the first edition of the Life of Charlotte Bronte, says :
' You give much too favourable an account of the black-
coated and Tory savages that kept the people down and
provoked excesses in those days. Old Roberson said he would
wade to the knees in blood rather than the then state of things
should be altered, a state including Corn Law, Test Law, and
a host of other oppressions."

Charlotte Bronte describes the Luddite riots in Shirley.
For this purpose she got the loan of a file of copies of the
Leeds Mercury covered by the period ; her father also was able
to give her material assistance from the standpoint of an eye-
witness of some of the stirring events, and her old school-
mistress, Miss Wooler, used to tell her pupils of her recollec-
tions of some of the scenes when taking the girls for their
daily walks around the neighbourhood.

The rendezvous of the Luddites of the district was not far
from Patrick Bronte's home in Hartshead. It was by the
Dumb Steeple — a monument without an inscription, hence
its name. Here the men met at midnight. Near by was the
inn known as " The Three Nuns/' where they adjourned after
taking the oath and learning the pass-words, which were said
to be " go " and " inn." The men were also drilled in the use
of certain signs which were quite masonic.

In Ben 0' Bill's, the Luddite, Mr. D. F. E. Sykes, LL.B., a
native of Huddersfield, quoting from old manuscripts of the
days of the Luddites, says : " Mr. Cartwright was more of a

30 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

foreigner nor an Englishman. A quiet man with a cutting
tongue. Had ne'er a civil word for a man, an' down on him
in a jiffy if he looked at a pot o' beer. Drank nowt himself.
. . . Was sacking the old hands and stocking Rawfolds with
machines ; and Parson Roberson was worse nor him."

The Luddites were more favourable to Mr. Horsfall of
Marsden, as he was a Yorkshireman, out and out, and,
according to Mr. Sykes' narrative, a coin was tossed to decide
which mill was to be attacked — heads for Horsfall, tails for
Cartwright. The coin fell with the head uppermost, but the
tosser, pretending to take the coin to the light of the fire,
turned the penny over, so that it was against Mr. Cartwright.

" ' I'm glad it fell on Cartwright/ I said to my cousin, as we
doffed our things that night. ' Aw thought tha would be,'
said George. * It wer' a weight off me when it fell tails/ I
added/'

" ' But it were a head/ said George, with a quiet smile.

" ' A head ! '

" ' Ay, a head. But I knew tha wanted tails, so I turned
it i' th' palm o' mi hand, when I stooped over th' fire.' '

And yet men talk about fate, says the teller of the story.

The attack on Cartwright's mill at Rawfolds, Liversedge,
took place on Saturday, llth April, 1812, according to the
Leeds Mercury. The military were called out to defend the
mill, and on the following Saturday a court martial was held
on one of the soldiers who had acted in an unsoldierly manner.
It is recorded that he refused to fire for fear of hurting his own
brothers who were attacking the mill, and he was condemned —
so the account says — to three hundred lashes for his breach of
military discipline.

Mr. Cartwright returned home by way of Bradley Wood,
near Huddersfield, and was fired at by two men who were
hiding in the plantation. The shots missed fire and Mr.
Cartwright — the original of Robert Moore — escaped uninjured.

Charlotte Bronte does not follow absolutely the facts in
this part of her novel, for in Chapter XXXI of Shirley she
tells the story of Moore being shot. " Miss Keeldar read the
note : it briefly signified that last night Robert Moore had been

THE RED HOUSE, GOMERSAL. 31

shot at from behind the wall of Milldean plantation, at the
foot of the Brow ; that he was wounded severely, but it was
hoped not fatally : of the assassin or assassins, nothing was
known — they had escaped. . . ."

Briarmains had its original in the Red House, Gomersal,
said to date from 1660. It was the old home of Mary Taylor,
Charlotte Bronte's friend. Evidently some stranger had been
admitted to the house in circumstances somewhat similar to
those related of Moore in Charlotte Bronte's novel, for Mary
Taylor refers to the matter in her letter acknowledging the
copy of Shirley, and mentions " the handsome foreigner "
who was nursed in her home when she was a little girl, but she
points out to the novelist that she has placed the wounded
man in the servant's bedroom.

When the writer was privileged to go over the Red House,
now occupied by Dr. Waring Taylor, in October, 1908, the
room in which " the handsome foreigner " was lodged was
shown. The house has fortunately been preserved, and is
now much the same as it was in Charlotte Bronte's day. The
beautiful stained-glass windows in the family sitting-room
which Charlotte Bronte noticed are still there.

Some pictures which attracted Charlotte Bronte are in the
old library still ; there is the miniature of old Joshua Taylor—
the Hiram Yorke of Shirley — painted at Rome in 1802 ; and
there are also souvenirs that he brought home from Italy
and other places on the Continent. The Red House is well
worthy of notice, and the descendants of the Taylors are very
proud of the account given in Shirley. Hiram Yorke is a very
true representation of Joshua Taylor, a very intelligent manu-
facturer, who could speak French fluently, and yet loved to
talk in his rough Yorkshire dialect. Rose and Jessy Yorke of
Shirley were the two daughters, Mary and Martha Taylor.
One of Mr. Taylor's sons was allowed to read the part of Shirley
that refers to the Taylor family before it was published, and
he was well satisfied with the account.

This Yorkshire family of strong Radicals and Dissenters
had a meeting-house, known as Taylor's Chapel, near their
residence. It is now a cottage and a joiner's shop. Only one

32 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

gravestone can be identified, and the inscription is scarcely
legible. Some little distance from the house is the Taylors'
private burial-ground in Fir Dene Wood. It is still used, a
child of the family being buried there a few years ago.

Although it was only by a trick that Cartwright's mill at
Rawfolds came to be the one selected for attack, Mr. Timothy
Horsfall, of Marsden, the other manufacturer in the district
who had opposed the Luddites and who did all he could to trace
the ringleaders in the attack on Cartwright's mill, was the one
to lose his life. On Tuesday, 28th April, 1812, he was shot
on Crossland Moor, not far from the Warren House Inn, and
died the next day. For this murder, three men were hanged
at York in the following January, and the fourth turned
" King's Evidence."

In Shirley, Charlotte Bronte gives a graphic description of
the attack on Hollows mill, but she does not mention the
Horsfalls of Marsden. Cartwright was evidently considered
to be the more interesting character. Her description of
Caroline Helstone trying to go to the help pf Robert Gerard
Moore reminds the readers of a somewhat similar event in
North and South, where Mrs. Gaskell describes a Manchester
mill riot and Margaret Hale defends Thornton, the owner of
the mill. North and South, however, was written after Shirley,
though there are parts of Shirley which owe something to
Mary Barton. Indeed, it was said in Ha worth that Charlotte
Bronte wished to write a story of the Chartists, but that
Mr. Butterfield, of Keighley, persuaded her not to do so.
He was proud of telling the story of his walk with Charlotte
Bronte from Keighley to Ha worth, when he used the oppor-
tunity to persuade her not to write on the subject of the Char-
tists, but rather to deal with the Luddite riots as being a more
suitable subject.

The most exciting scene in the novel is the graphic descrip-
tion of the storming of the mill ; and it is interesting to know
that Mrs. Gaskell, in her North and South, has a somewhat
similar scene.

" ' Shirley — Shirley, the gates are down ! That crash was
like the felling of great trees. Now they are pouring through.

THE STORMING OF HOLLOWS MILL 33

They will break down the mill-doors as they have broken the
gate : what can Robert do against so many ? Would to God
I were a little nearer him — could hear him speak — could speak
to him ! With my will — my longing to serve him — I could
not be a useless burden in his way. I could be turned to
some account.' " . . .

Mr. Cartwright earned the goodwill of the manufacturers in
the district for his firm stand against the Luddites. In the
Bronte Museum at Haworth is the actual testimonial, written
on parchment, which was presented to Mr. William Cartwright,
of Rawfolds mill, by influential inhabitants of the West Riding
of Yorkshire on 17th May, 1813. The writing is very faded,
but a typewritten copy of the inscription has been made.

It was during such times as these that Patrick Bronte was
in charge of a church in the district, and it is not to be wondered
at that he became morose and melancholy. Life was cheap
in Yorkshire, and the young Irish clergyman needed all his
courage and discretion to manage the people. The rich and
poor were poles asunder, and the misery and suffering on the
one hand was matched by fear and cruelty on the other.

" Misery generates hate : these sufferers hated the machines
which they believed took their bread from them : they hated
the buildings which contained those machines ; they hated
the manufacturers who owned those buildings," says Charlotte
Bronte in Shirley. Though the workers were prejudiced
against the machines, the hand-looms disappeared in time,
and the factories, with their noisy machinery, flourished, and
the looms, once a feature of so many artisans' cottages, were
broken up. Charlotte Bronte was at a disadvantage compared
with Mrs. Gaskell who wrote of the " hungry forties," because
she did not actually witness the scenes she describes.

In the second year of Patrick Bronte's residence at Harts-
head, and at the time of the Luddite riots, a Wesleyan Academy
was built at Woodhouse Grove, Apperley Bridge, near Leeds
and Bradford ; a tablet on the old part of the building is
inscribed " Wesleyan Academy, opened January 8th, 1812."
It was intended for the education of the sons of Wesleyan
ministers, whose length of stay in any one circuit is usually

34 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

not more than three years. Mr. H. Walton Starkey, in his
Short History of Woodhouse Grove School, says that the first head-
master and governor was Mr. John Fennell, and his wife was
responsible for the household arrangements ; their joint
salary was £100 a year. The school started with eight boys,
but by the end of the year there were seventy names on the
books. Mr. and Mrs. Fennell remained about a year, as Mr.
Fennell decided to take orders in the Church of England, and
that becoming known, he was required to leave. There were
also complaints as to Mrs. Fenn ell's management of the
household.

Subsequently the Rev. Jabez Bunting secured the appoint-
ment for his brother-in-law, the Rev. Thomas Fletcher, who
was the grandfather of " Deas Cromarty."

Mr. Fennell became a curate at the Parish Church, Bradford,
and later was appointed Vicar of Cross Stones, near Todmorden.

The first inspector at the Woodhouse Grove School was the
Rev. Patrick Bronte, who examined the pupils at the end of the
summer term.

It is probable that the Rev. William Morgan knew that
Patrick Bronte had been a successful teacher in County Down.
His report on the school has never been quoted and research
has failed to find it.

The Woodhouse Grove Academy, or school as it is now called,
is on the north bank of the Aire, just below the bridge ; it is
delightfully situated in its own grounds, and the governor's
house adjoins the school. Whether Patrick Bronte had been
to Woodhouse Grove Academy before he went as an examiner
we are not told, but before August, 1812, was out, he was
sending love letters to the Headmaster's niece, Maria Branwell
daughter of Mr. Fennell's wife's brother. Evidently Mr.
Bronte's warm-hearted Irish temperament would not allow
him to remain a woman-hater for long. The engagement
appears to have taken place in July, and the nine letters
which have been published point to times of happiness and
pleasure, referring to country walks to the historic spots
around Apperley, to Calverley and to Kirkstall Abbey ; the

PATRICK BRONTE'S MARRIAGE 35

latter place inspired Patrick Bronte to write a poem on the
old abbey.

Maria Bran well was a refined and cultured woman of thirty ;
she was making a long visit from her home in Penzance to
her aunt and uncle at Woodhouse Grove. Her cousin, Jane
Fennell, was engaged to the Rev. William Morgan, and it
was only natural that Patrick Bronte, with his capacity for
falling in love, should be captivated by the quiet, modest
Cornish lady, who had all the qualifications for making a good
and capable clergyman's wife, although she was a Wesleyan
Methodist. As Patrick Bronte had been disappointed before,
he did not mean to have a repetition. He was now thirty-five,
and in addition to being Vicar of Hartshead, was known in
a limited circle as a poet and an author, having already pub-
lished his Cottage Poems. He could also point to a good
record at the places where he had served as curate. The only
objections hitherto raised against him were that he was an
Irishman and little was known of his relatives. These,
however, do not appear to have been serious obstacles in
his wooing of Maria Bran well, who reciprocated his love.
A long courtship was out of the question, and on the 29th of
the following December, the marriage was celebrated at
Guiseley Parish Church, where the marriage certificate may
be seen. Next to it is the certificate of marriage of the Rev.
William Morgan and Jane Fennell.

The two clergymen did not seem anxious to have a third to
help to tie the knots, for Mr. Morgan officiated at the marriage
of Patrick Bronte and Maria Branwell, and Patrick Bronte
united in wedlock William Morgan and Jane Fennell, the
wives acting as bridesmaids to each other, whilst Mr. John
Fennell gave both brides away. It is recorded that as he had
the responsibility of giving the brides away, he could not marry
them ; but he was then only a Wesleyan local preacher, and
therefore was not qualified to officiate in church. It is remark-
able that, at the very hour and on the same day, two cousins
of the two brides, Joseph and Charlotte Branwell, were married
at Madron, the parish church of Penzance, so that two sisters
and four cousins were married on the same day.

36 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1813, is an entry recording
the Yorkshire marriages : " Lately at Guiseley, near Bradford,
by the Rev. William Morgan, minister of Bierley, Rev. P.
Bronte, B.A., minister of Hartshead-cum-Clifton, to Maria,
third daughter of the late T. Bran well, Esq., of Penzance.
At the same time, by the Rev. P. Bronte, Rev. W. Morgan,
to the only daughter of Mr. John Fennell, Headmaster of
the Wesleyan Academy near Bradford."

Guiseley, in Wharf edale, is about three miles distant from
Woodhouse Grove. In Slater's History of Guiseley is a list
of the rectors from 1234 ; one of the rectors, Robert Moore —
whose name appears in Shirley — built the rectory, and placed
a curious Latin inscription over the doorway, which trans-
lated reads : " Anno domini 1601. The house of the faithful
pastor, not of the blind leader ; not of the robber ; the house
of Robert Moore, rector of the church, founder of the house."

The parish registers, which date from 1556, contain several
entries referring to the ancestors of the famous American poet,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The name is still preserved
in the village, and a pedigree with notes is to be found in
Margerison's Calverley Registers.

Of Mrs. Bronte, little is recorded. Mrs. Gaskell's informant
described her as " extremely small in person ; not pretty, but
very elegant, and always dressed with a quiet simplicity of
taste, which accorded well with her general character." This
description would apply also to her famous daughter, Charlotte,
in her later years. Mrs. Bronte's quiet personality seems to
have been quite overshadowed by her husband, and the fact
that she died eight years after her marriage left little chance
of obtaining much authentic information ; but all that is
known proves her to have been worthy of being the mother of
Emily and Charlotte Bronte. Maria Bran well was the daughter
of Thomas Branwell of Penzance, who had been a member
of the Corporation of that town. She had been educated
with care, and in religious matters she had been trained in the
tenets of the Methodist faith. She had a private income of
£50 a year, her parents having died a little more than two
years before her marriage. In order to avoid the trouble and

THE BRANWELLS OF CORNWALL 37

expense of a long journey to Cornwall, she decided to send for
her personal property and be married in Yorkshire. Unfor-
tunately the boxes were lost at sea, and in a simple and
charming letter she told Mr. Bronte of the disaster.

The descendants of the Branwells were proud of their con-
nection with the Brontes, and one of the last survivors was
named Thomas, after Charlotte Bronte's maternal grandfather,
and Bronte in honour of the family connection. Miss Charlotte
Branwell, the sister of Thomas Bronte Branwell, named her
house Shirley, and so kept in remembrance her connection
with the Brontes. Mrs. Bronte's mother's maiden name was
Carne, and both on the father's and mother's side the Branwell
family was sufficiently well descended to enable them to mix
in the best society of which Penzance at that time could boast.
Miss Elizabeth Branwell, Mrs. Bronte's elder sister, who went
to live at Haworth in 1822, bears this out, for Miss Ellen
Nussey says : " She talked a good deal of her younger days ;
the gaieties of her native town, Penzance, in Cornwall, the soft
warm climate, etc. The social life of her younger days she
used to recall with regret ; she gave one the idea that she had
been a belle among her one-time acquaintances." Mr. and
Mrs. Bronte commenced housekeeping in a three-storied stone-
built house in Clough Lane; Hightown, Liversedge, there
being no fixed parsonage. The house is still standing ; the
stones are blackened by the smoke of the district and
the weather, but otherwise it is in good condition. The
centenary anniversary of this Bronte wedding was celebrated
the 29th of December, 1912, but, alas ! there were no descend-
ants to join in the celebration of the wedding of the parents
of the famous novelists, but some of the love letters which
Maria Branwell wrote to Patrick Bronte have been published
in Mr. Shorter 's The Brontes : Life and Letters. They are
modest, sincere and sensible, and they show that the writer
had the saving grace of humour ; especially when addressing
" My dear, saucy Pat."

Possibly Mrs. Bronte would have objected to her love letters
being made public. Mrs. Gaskell was allowed to see them,
but she refrained from publishing more than extracts.

38 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Charlotte Bronte says she read them with a sense of reverence,
regretting that she had but a dim recollection of her mother.

The marriage was fortunate in many respects, and, whatever
may have been laid to the charge of Mr. Bronte in later years,
the early years of his married life were happy and prosperous.
He had a salary of some £320 per annum, which to him must
have appeared both enough and to spare. He has been blamed
for giving so much time to authorship during his early married
life, to the neglect of his wife, but it is quite probable that she
was ambitious and urged him to spend much of his time in his
study, for, in one of her published letters, she says : " Let me
not interrupt your studies, nor intrude on that time which
ought to be better associated to better purposes."

The Rev. William Morgan, who lived not far away at Brad-
ford, was also a writer, and the two young wives may have
been anxious to have their husbands known for their literary
output as well as for their preaching, for both clergymen were
prolific writers, though their literary efforts were of little
value. Mrs. Bronte' seems to have cherished the desire of
being an author herself, for she has left just one little essay
on The Advantages of Poverty in Religious Concerns, which
was written with a view to publication in some periodical.
It was reverently treasured by her husband, and it has now
been published, after having been written nearly a hundred,
years ago.

Patrick Bronte must have enjoyed the part of Shirley which
related to his first incumbency, for he loved to tell stories of
those stirring times. In spite, however, of the tumult which' sur-
rounded Hartshead, he found time to prepare a small volume
of poems, some of which were probably written in Ireland.

His volume of Cottage Poems is prefaced by a long didactic
sermon to his readers, which makes rather amusing reading.
His concluding remarks are written in the third person.

" The Author must confess, that his labours have already
rewarded him by the pleasure which he took in them.

" When released from his clerical avocations, he was occupied
in writing the Cottage Poems ; from morning till noon, and from
noon till night, his employment was full of real, indescribable

COTTAGE POEMS 39

pleasure, such as he could wish to taste as long as life lasts.
His hours glided pleasantly and almost imperceptibly by :
and when night drew on and he retired to rest, ere he closed
his eyes in sleep, with sweet calmness and serenity of mind,
he often reflected that, though the delicate palate of Criticism
might be disgusted, the business of the day, in the prosecution
of his humble task, was well pleasing in the sight of God,
and might, by his blessing, be rendered useful to some poor
soul, who cared little about critical niceties, who lived unknow-
ing and unknown in some little cottage, and whom, perchance,
the Author might neither see nor hear of, till that day, when
the assembled universe shall stand before the tribunal of the
Eternal Judge "

In 1813, whilst still at Hartshead, Mr. Bronte published a
second volume of poems, The Rural Minstrel, described as a
miscellany of descriptive poems, by the Rev. P. Bronte, A.B.,
minister of Hartshead-cum-Clifton, near Leeds, Yorkshire.
One of the poems is entitled Lines addressed to a Lady on her
Birthday, which in this case was to his future wife, Maria
Branwell. Probably Mr. Bronte lost money on his publishing
ventures ; hence his warning to his daughter in later years.

Mr. and Mrs. Bronte lived at the tall house in Clough Lane,
Hightown, for a little more than two years ; and their two
daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, were born there.

In 1815 he removed to Thornton, some twelve miles away,
exchanging livings with the Rev. Thomas Atkinson. One
reason for the change was that his wife, who was delicate,
wished to be nearer her cousin Jane, who had married the Rev.
William Morgan, vicar of Christ Church, Bradford. Also
her uncle, Mr. John Fennell, had joined the Church of England,
and was a curate at the Bradford Parish Church. As Thornton
was only some three miles from Bradford, it was possible for
the relatives to meet frequently. Another reason suggested
for the change was that the Rev. Thomas Atkinson, vicar of
the Old Bell Chapel at Thornton and nephew of Hammond
Roberson, was anxious to live near his fiancee, Miss Walker,
of Lascelles Hall, which is a curious little hamlet near
Huddersfield, and is well known to cricketers.

40 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Mr. Atkinson married Miss Walker, but they did not go to
the house vacated by the Brontes, preferring to rent a house
known as Green House, Mirfield. It was to this house that
Charlotte Bronte was invited when a pupil at Roe Head,
Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson being her god-parents. When she was
there during her first term at Roe Head, a visitor lifted her on
her knee, thinking that Charlotte Bronte, who was very small
for her age, was little more than a baby ; she at once requested
to be put down, just as Polly did in Villette.

Elizabeth, the second daughter, was born on 8th February,
1815, at Clough Lane, Hightown, but was not baptised until
the following 26th August at Thornton. The entry in the
Register of Baptisms at Thornton Church is in very faint
writing, which caused it to be overlooked for many years .
Moreover, it was expected that the entry would be at
Hartshead Church.

When Patrick Bronte left Hartshead in 1815, with his wife
and two children — the younger only a few months old — he
had made his reputation as a preacher, and was considered a
scholar, as he had published two books.

CHAPTER IV

THE REV. PATRICK BRONTE AT THORNTON
1815-1820

REFERRING to his five years' residence at Thornton, Patrick
Bronte wrote in 1835, " My happiest days were spent there."
From an old diary, published by Prof. Moore Smith in the
Bookman, October, 1904, and written by his grandmother,
who, as Miss Firth, lived near the Brontes at Thornton in her
early days, it is evident that both Mr. and Mrs. Bronte enjoyed
themselves in a quiet way, visiting and receiving visits from
the Firth family, who lived at Kipping, and from Mr. and Mrs.
Morgan and uncle Fennell.

There were very few houses in Thornton at that time, so
that Patrick Bronte would be able to get round to his parish-
ioners fairly often ; he was always a faithful pastoral visitor.
Miss Elizabeth Bran well, Mrs. Bronte's sister, spent several
months at the Thornton parsonage in 1815 and 1816, and as
she is constantly referred to in the diary, it is probable that
she was responsible for some of the social intercourse between
the Brontes and prominent families in the neighbourhood,
and was able to render help to Mrs. Bronte in the management
of her young family.

Thornton, as the birthplace of Patrick Bronte's famous
children — Charlotte, born 21st April, 1816 ; Patrick Bran well,
26th June, 1817 ; Emily Jane, 30th July, 1818 ; and Anne,
17th January, 1820 — had not received the recognition which
it deserved, until Mr. William Scruton published a booklet
on the birthplace of Charlotte Bronte in 1884, and fourteen
years afterwards an interesting work on Thornton and the
Brontes. The family, however, only lived in Thornton for
five years, and there is little personal history to record, but

42 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

as the birthplace of the two famous sisters it deserves to rank
as the first Bronte shrine. Mrs. Gaskell described the neigh-
bourhood as " desolate and wild ; great tracts of black land
enclosed by stone dykes, sweeping up Clayton heights." She
and her husband drove from Bradford to Haworth by Thornton
and Denholme. Except in the summer time or early autumn,
the moors in this part of Yorkshire present a dreary appear-
ance to a stranger, but to those who can see beauty in lonely
grandeur the moors at all times are far from being so desolate
as Mrs. Gaskell described them.

It is unfortunate that, in this matter, other writers have
adopted Mrs. Gaskell 's description, and the New York Sun, in
reviewing Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte, referring to
this district at the time when Patrick Bronte lived there said :
" It was a drear, desolate place, and that with the exception of
the Fiji islanders, the Yorkshire people were, perhaps, the
wildest and doggedest existing." The West Riding folk were
naturally very indignant, and to this day they keenly resent
Mrs. Gaskell's account of themselves and their district. They
affirm that Yorkshire is much more civilised than Lancashire,
and they contrast the beauties of the Yorkshire moors and dales
with the slums not far from Mrs. Gaskell's home in Manchester.

It could not have been either the place or the situation that
caused Patrick Bronte to speak of the happiness which he
enjoyed in Thornton, for the district is much more bleak and
desolate than Hartshead. Nor was the house an improvement,
judging by the number of rooms and its position in Market
Street. Moreover, St. James's Church— the Old Bell Chapel,
as it was called — was not so pleasing an edifice as St. Peter's,
Hartshead. The chief attraction which Thornton had for
Patrick Bronte was of a social and family nature, and Bradford,
within walking distance, had its subscription library, of which
Mr. Bronte was a member. There were also in the neighbour-
hood of Thornton several influential families, who took an
interest in the new vicar and his wife.

The district is far from prepossessing to-day. Thornton
is now a busy manufacturing part of Bradford, with a popula-
tion of from 6,000 to 7,000. It can be approached by train

THE THORNTON DISTRICT 43

or tram from Bradford. The huge woollen mills, which
have supplanted the hand-looms — a mode of manufacture
common for the previous 500 years — find work for the greater
part of the people. Thornton was incorporated with the City
of Bradford in 1899.

When Patrick Bronte went to live at Thornton, the people
were mostly hand-loom weavers. Thornton Hall and Leven-
thorp Hall, both of which are still standing, though greatly
altered and now turned into cottages, show that the district
was not deserted by the wealthier classes. In Domesday Book
Thornton is spelt Torenton — the town of thorns — and it is
said to have got its name from the number of thorn bushes
to be found in the neighbourhood. In Jane Eyre, Jane lives
at Thornfield, and afterwards flees to Morton, which is Moor
Town. Thornton is only six miles distant from Ha worth,
but it is less interesting, being more bleak and unsheltered.
Charlotte Bronte, in her introduction to Selections from the
literary remains of Ellis and Acton Bell, gives a very faithful
picture of the district, which applies to Thornton as well as
to Haworth : " The scenery of these hills is not grand — it
is not romantic ; it is scarcely striking. Long, low moors —
with heath, shut in little valleys, where a stream waters, here
and there, a fringe of stunted copse. Mills and scattered
cottages chase romance from these valleys ; it is only higher
up, deep in amongst the ridges of the moors, that Imagination
can find rest for the sole of her foot ; and even if she finds
it there, she must be a solitude-loving raven, no gentle dove."

Though the hills are dreary and desolate, the valleys are not
to be despised. Pinchbeck valley in summer time is a pleasant
enough spot.

The Thornton Parsonage, to which Patrick Bronte and his
family removed in 1815, was in many respects similar to the
house at Hightown, near Hartshead. It was built of Yorkshire
stone, quarried from the immediate neighbourhood, but it
had not so many bedrooms and was only two storeys high.
It is still standing in the middle of Market Street, and many
Bronte pilgrims wend their way to this neighbourhood to see
the house made famous as being the birthplace of their literary

44 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

heroine. The house has been altered, and in front of the room
in which the four younger children were born a butcher's shop
has been built. Fortunately the owner has spared the room
in which Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne first saw the
light. It stands on the ground floor to the right of the entrance.
It was quite usual in those days to have a sort of state-room
downstairs — half parlour and half spare bedroom — " where
the children made their first appearance, and where the heads
of the household lay down to die if the Great Conqueror gave
them sufficient warning. " Moreover, all the rooms in the upper
part of the house were occupied, one as Mr. and Mrs. Bronte's
bedroom, a small one as a dressing-room, another as Patrick
BrontS's study, one small room at the back of the house as the
children's bedroom, and another as the servant's bedroom.
The room to the left of the entrance, on the ground floor, was
the family dining-room, and behind this was the kitchen.

There is still to be seen the old fire-grate in which a fire was
lit to take off the chill on that April morning in 1816 when
Charlotte Bronte was born. An attempt was made to sell the
house by public auction in the spring of 1911, but the owners
were disappointed by the offers made, and it was withdrawn.
The auctioneer remarked that he had expected a ship-load of
Americans competing to pui chase it. The Bronte Society
was represented, but did not venture to offer such a price as
would tempt the owners to part with it.

The Bell Chapel, to which Patrick Bronte was appointed in
1815, is now in ruins, and only one end of the old edifice is left
standing in the midst of many blackened tombstones. It is
close by the main road on which the trams from Bradford
pass continually. Bronte pilgrims have worn a narrow path
from the road to the ruins. Some have thought that the Bell
Chapel at Thornton was the one in Emily Bronte's mind when
she wrote Wuthering Heights. It was old and dilapidated
at the time she was writing, and she and her sister, when
walking over Denholme moors to Bradford, would pass the
old chapel in which they were baptized. The churchyard in
which Cathy, Edgar Linton, and Heathcliff were buried
answers well to the description.

Photo by

Percival M. Chadwick

THORNTON VICARAGE

THE BELL CHAPEL, THORNTON 45

When Catherine Linton was buried, Emily Bronte says of
her grave : "It was dug on a green slope in a corner of the
kirk-yard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry
plants have climbed over it from the moor ; and peat mould
almost buries it."

This description fitted the Old Bell Chapel graveyard. The
chapel itself was built by a freemason over 300 years ago.
On the west gable were inscriptions on two stones, dated 1587
and 1612. The interior of the chapel at one time contained
some ancient monumental tablets of local interest. The
building itself had the appearance of a Dissenting chapel,
except for the cupola and bell. When Patrick Bronte was
appointed to the living at Thornton he made many alterations
— re-roofing the chapel, rebuilding the south side, and adding
a cupola to the tower.

Until a few years ago, a stone font might have been seen
among the debris of the ruins of the chapel. A worthy devotee
of the Brontes was instrumental in getting it transferred to
the vestibule of the new church of St. James, which is built on
the opposite side of the road. Within the church is another
stone font of still earlier date. The opinion was expressed
by an old inhabitant of Thornton that this font has been used
for christening in the open air, but the present vicar thinks it
is really an old holy-water stoup.

Until a short time ago there was to be seen at the " Black
Horse," an old inn, not far from the church, a stone horse-
mount, for the use of worshippers who attended church in
the time of the pillion. The Old Bell Chapel was formerly
the only place of worship connected with the Church of Eng-
land between Ha worth and Bradford. Both Ha worth Church
and Thornton Church were built as chapels-of-ease to the
Bradford Parish Church, another chapel-of-ease being built
at Low Moor, a few miles from Bradford.

The new church of St. James was built in 1870, and the
present vicar, anxious for a new organ which should be worthy
of the church, decided to appeal to the devotees of the Brontes.
The project of a Bronte organ was taken up with great enthu-
siasm in Thornton, and ten working men offered to raise ten

46 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

pounds each — a promise which they were not long in fulfilling.
The organ cost £1,200, and with the exception of one fifty
pound note, which came from a former parishioner settled in
America, the bulk of the money was raised in Thornton and
the surrounding neighbourhood. It was a matter for dis-
appointment to those who were responsible for the raising of
the funds that more support was not obtained from the Bronte
devotees who resided at a distance from Thornton. A small
brass plate on the organ bears this inscription —

" THE BRONTE MEMORIAL ORGAN

1897 "

In the vestry is an oak chest, which has been in use since
1685, and in it are the church registers, now almost unde-
cipherable. One interesting volume contains the entry of the
baptisms of the four children of Patrick Bronte, who were born
at Thornton.

In 1902 the Council of the Bronte Society affixed an engraved
brass memorial tablet on the old parsonage. It reads —

" In this house were born the following members of the
Bronte family.

CHARLOTTE 1816
BRAN WELL 1817
EMILY 1818
ANNE 1820"

Although, according to Miss Firth's diary, Mrs. Bronte
appears to have had some social enjoyment and exchanged
visits with her neighbours, in company with her husband and
her sister, Miss Elizabeth Branwell, she must have had a very
busy life with her young family. Her second child was only
a few months old when she went to Thornton, and before she
left, five years afterwards, the family had increased to six.
There was not a room in the house that could well be spared
for a nursery. Miss Branwell, who was with Mrs. Bronte
when Charlotte was born, and for some months afterwards,
needed accommodation, and, with the general servant and
nursemaid, there was a household of eleven in this little
parsonage. Mrs. Bronte must have been a very capable
manager for her husband to be able to say that his happiest

NANCY GARRS 47

days were spent at Thornton. It was during his stay here
that he published a small volume — The Cottage in the Wood,
or the Art of becoming rich and happy — and he has also been
credited with a story which formed another volume — The
Maid of Killarney, or Albion and Flora, a tale, in which are
interwoven some cursory remarks on religion and politics.
No author's name is attached to the book. Altogether Patrick
Bronte could now claim to be the writer of four small volumes ;
they were, however, such that literature would not have been
much the poorer if he had never published them, but they
show evidence of a thoughtful mind, and if too didactic they
are artless and sincere. In a small house filled with children,
with a husband busy with writing and preparing sermons,
Mrs. Bronte's task must have been by no means an easy one.
It is noticeable that Mr. Bronte did not publish any
poems after he lived at Thornton ; the muse from this point
appears to have left him.

The old servants of the Thornton Vicarage — Nancy and
Sarah Garrs — had nothing but kind remembrances of Mr. and
Mrs. Bronte. Shortly after the family went to reside at
Thornton, Mrs. Bronte felt it necessary to engage a second
servant, and Mr. Bronte applied to the Bradford School of
Industry. It was thus that Nancy Garrs became nurse in
the Bronte family, and she was with Mrs. Bronte when Charlotte
Emily Jane, Patrick Branwell, and Anne were born.

Nancy Garrs married a Patrick Wainwright, and the old
nurse was proud in after years to tell how Patrick Bronte
entered the kitchen one day at Ha worth, saying : " Nancy
is it true, what I have heard, that you are going to marry a
Pat ? " " It is," replied Nancy, " and if he prove but a tenth
part as kind a husband to me as you have been to Mrs. Bronte,
I shall think myself very happy in having made a Pat my
choice."

Nancy Garrs, like others who were associated with the
Brontes in their early days, regretted that she had not a better
memory to recall the doings and sayings of the little Brontes,
but as the old servant would say pathetically : "I never
thought they would have become so much thought of, or I

48 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

would have been sure to have taken more notice. " Nancy's
work of washing, dressing and feeding this young family left
little time for observing the ways of the children, but, when
they became famous as writers, her pride was very real. She
continued with the family after Mrs. Bronte's death, and once
when she was ill with fever in Bradford, Charlotte Bronte
visited her and, regardless of infection, rushed to the bed and
kissed her old nurse, bursting into tears to find her so ill.

Unfortunately, this faithful nurse died in the Bradford
workhouse on 26th March, 1886, at the age of eighty-two,
and she is buried in the Undercliff Cemetery.

Sarah Garrs, sister of Nancy Garrs, became second nurse
at the Thornton parsonage as the family increased so
rapidly. She afterwards became Mrs. Newsome, and emi-
grated to America, where she delighted to tell of her early
days with the Bronte family. She claimed that her correct
name was de Garrs.

These two servants; who accompanied the Bronte family
to Haworth, considered they had been libelled by Mrs. Gaskell
in her Life of Charlotte Bronte, where she wrote : " There was
plenty, and even waste in the house, with young servants,
and no mistress to look after them." Both sisters appealed
to Mr. Bronte, when they found that they were publicly
branded as wasteful, and the old vicar, in 'order to mollify
their injured feelings, wrote out for them the following
testimonial, which may be seen in the Bronte Museum.

" HAWORTH, August 17th, 1857.

" I beg leave to state to all whom it may concern, that
Nancy and Sarah Garrs, during the time they were in my
service, were kind to my children, and honest and not wasteful,
but sufficiently careful in regard to food, and all other articles
committed to their care.

"P. BRONTE, A.B.,
" Incumbent of Haworth, Yorkshire."

CHAPTER V

HAWORTH

1820-1824

AFTER five successful years as incumbent of the Old Bell
Chapel at Thornton; Patrick Bronte was offered the perpetual
curacy of the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Haworth,
which, like Thornton, was a Chapel of Ease to the Bradford
Parish Church. It was distant from Thornton about six
miles over the moors. This was the fourth Yorkshire church
with which Patrick Bronte became associated.

The appointment as incumbent of Haworth was offered by
the Vicar of Bradford, the Rev. R. H. Heap, who considered
he had the right of presentation. The living was accepted by
the Rev. Patrick Bronte, who was very much surprised shortly
afterwards to receive a courteous letter from the trustees of
the Haworth church, stating that they had no personal objec-
tion to him, but, as they had not been consulted about the
matter, they must decline to accept him as their clergyman.
They claimed a joint right with the Vicar of Bradford in
appointing a minister, as it remained with them to provide
a part of the stipend.

When this was brought to Mr. Bronte's notice, he withdrew
his acceptance of the post, as he sympathised with the trustees
and wrote urging them to hold out against the Vicar of

4— (2200)

50 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

Bradford on his behalf, as otherwise they were in danger of
obtaining " an inferior man." This assumption of his own
superiority to other candidates was put in rather a simple
way. His letters to the trustees are still in existence. This,
as may be expected, smoothed his path when he subse-
quently became the clergyman at Ha worth. Mrs. Gaskell,
in her Life of Charlotte Bronte, did not get the exact facts of the
case. She says : " Owing to some negligence, this right (of
the trustees) has been lost to the freeholders and trustees at
Haworth." The trustees, however, had not forfeited their
rights, but still retained certain powers, and on the death of
the Rev. James Charnock, who was the clergyman at Haworth
from 1791 to 1819, they determined to enforce their rights.

After Mr. Bronte's withdrawal in June, 1819, there was a
struggle between the Vicar of Bradford and the trustees of
Haworth church, which lasted for nearly a year. During
this interregnum, a Rev. W. Anderton officiated frequently,
and in the following November the Rev. Samuel Redhead,
who had often taken duty for Mr. Charnock during his illness,
officiated at a funeral at Haworth church. It was this
Mr. Redhead who was nominated for the living by the Vicar
of Bradford after Mr. Bronte's withdrawal. He accepted
the appointment, but was only allowed to attempt to officiate
for three weeks, for the trustees were determined not to be
coerced, and they were supported by the parishioners. Then
ensued the disorderly scenes which gave Haworth an unenviable
reputation for years. Some of the old inhabitants, whom the
writer has questioned, were prepared to substantiate in the
main Mrs. Gaskell's graphic account of the church riots,
when Mr. Redhead insisted on carrying out his duties in the
parish church. They take some of the sting somewhat out
of the account by stating that the chimney-sweep, who clam-
bered into the pulpit on the third Sunday, was half-witted,
and not drunk, and referring to the wearing of clogs they
maintain that the regular worshippers, and in fact the working
people of the district, were in the habit of wearing boots on
Sunday, and that the clogs were worn by the roughs, who had
come from the neighbouring villages, and even from across

DISORDERLY SCENES IN HAWORTH CHURCH 51

the Lancashire borders, and who were determined to make as
much noise as possible when leaving the church.

Mr. Redhead became curate of Calverley, not far from
Apperley Bridge, in 1823, and died in 1845. His memoir was
published in 1846. Mr. Bronte was not anxious to refer to
the riotous scenes of 1820, and when questioned by Mrs.
Gaskell he merely said, " My predecessor took the living with
the consent of the Vicar of Bradford, but in opposition to the
trustees ; in consequence of which he was so opposed
that, after three weeks' possession, he was compelled to
resign."

There is no doubt that the trustees of Haworth church were
justified in their contention, as can be proved by documents
in the possession of the rector of Haworth. The origin of the
dispute goes much further back than the registers which are
now in existence. The present rector of Haworth, the Rev.
T. W. Story, M.A., wrote a series of notes on the old Haworth
registers in the Parish Magazine ; and later he published
them in book form. He has searched the oldest registers,
though he says in some cases they are only copies, and are
in the eighteenth century characters and phraseology. From
these documents he shows that Mrs. Gaskell, in her Life of
Charlotte Bronte, was wrong when she said that Haworth
church stands on what was most probably the site of an ancient
(Saxon) field-kirk or oratory, and as she gives no evidence
in support of her statement, it is most likely based on mere
conjecture.

Mr. Story, to whom I am indebted for the particulars from
his Notes on the old Haworth registers, says —

" The earliest reference to Haworth ' Chapel ' in the Arch-
bishop's Registers at York is 1317. A monition was then
issued commanding the Rector and Vicar of Bradford and the
freeholders of Haworth to pay to the Curate the salary due to
him in the proportions to which they had been liable from
ancient times. From this we may fairly conclude that a
Chapel existed at Haworth considerably earlier than 1300.
The Rector of Bradford was the owner of the ' great tithes,'
the Vicar was his deputy and owner of the ' small tithes.' A

52 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

similar monition stating definitely the amounts due to the
* Curate ' from the various sources was issued in 1320. The
Rector of Bradford was commanded to pay twenty shillings,
the Vicar of Bradford two marks and a half, and the
inhabitants of Ha worth one mark." Archbishop Melton's
Register.

When chantries were confiscated in the first year of Edward
VI, the whole income of the Ha worth curacy appears to have
been seized. How the curate was supported between that
time and the second year of Queen Elizabeth does not appear,
but at the latter date a public subscription was made in the
parish by which a sum of £36 was raised. With this sum,
several farms at Stanbury — the village adjoining Ha worth —
were purchased. The rents were to be paid by trustees to
the curate of Haworth, but a clause was inserted in the deed,
by which a condition was made that, if the trustees did not
concur in the appointment, they had power to devote the
income to the poor, until such time as an appointment was
made in which they did concur. Therefore the appointment
remained with the Vicar of Bradford, but the trustees held the
purse, and could thus secure a share in the choice for themselves.
Mr. Story says the document is a very long one.

It was the claim based on this ancient deed that caused the
trouble when Mr. Bronte was first appointed to the " per-
petual curacy of Haworth " ; but this was not the only time
when the trustees asserted their rights. After the death of
the Rev. William Grimshaw in 1763 the then trustees, Robert
Heaton and John Greenwood, warned the Archbishop of York
against agreeing to an appointment apart from their con-
currence, so that Mrs. Gaskell and other writers on the sub-
ject have been wrong in referring to the rights of the trustees
as " a foolish claim to antiquity."

After Mr. Redhead's resignation, the Vicar of Bradford
nominated other clergymen, but the trustees stood firm and
refused to consider their appointment. Whilst this struggle
was proceeding, Patrick Bronte wrote several ingenuous letters
to the trustees, urging them to support his claim, he was
evidently anxious to obtain the appointment. As he had

MR. BRONTE APPOINTED VICAR 53

approved of the rights of the trustees being recognised, they
concluded that the difficulty would be settled if they asked
that Mr. Bronte should be appointed to the curacy. As the
Vicar of Bradford had previously nominated Mr. Bronte,
he agreed to their suggestion and the appointment was made.
The letters which Mr. Bronte wrote to the Trustees at this
time were read by the present Rector of Haworth a few
years ago.

Mr. Bronte's appointment dated from 29th February, 1820,
eight months after the beginning of the trouble between the
trustees of Haworth church and the Vicar of Bradford.

Considering the difficulties which had arisen in connection
with the vacancy at Haworth church, it was necessary that
the new Vicar should begin his duties as soon as possible,
and no time was lost by Mr. Bronte. His wife and family,
however, did not remove to Haworth until the following May
or June, though more than one writer has pictured the wife
and family driving in an open cart over the bleak moors
between Thornton and Haworth in February or the early
part of March. As a matter of fact, the journey was not in
the cold weather. There is no doubt that Patrick Bronte*
would have some rough and cold journeys when walking
from Haworth to Thornton during the first few months of
his ministry at Haworth. The old inhabitants used to tell
of the arrival at Haworth of the eight carts, seven containing
the furniture, and a covered wagon containing Mrs. Bronte
and her six little children, the eldest not seven years old and
the youngest a few months old, Mr. Bronte walking by the
side of the covered wagon, occasionally lifting one of the children
from the conveyance in order to enjoy a little exercise, for the
rate of progress along the rough moorland road would only
be slow. The cavalcade toiled up Thornton Heights towards
Denholme, and by way of Flappit Springs and Braemoor,
reaching the steep Haworth main street late in the afternoon.
The people were much interested in the procession, which
wound its way round by the Black Bull, in front of the church
gates, and up the narrow passage to the Haworth parsonage.
Having left Thornton they entered their last home, which was

54 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

to become famous in later days because of the work done by
two of the little girls in that family group.

The parsonage is still standing in the old churchyard, though
it has been enlarged since the days of the Brontes, a new wing
having been added, consisting of a dining-room with bedrooms
above.

The house stands on high ground, and stretching behind
are the moors from which most glorious sunsets may often be
seen, even in November. The accommodation was scarcely
sufficient for the Bronte family, though it was an improvement
on the Thornton parsonage. One point in its favour was that
it had a more retired position — the little garden in front was
a more sheltered place for the children, and in many ways
better than the street at Thornton, and it was also nearer the
church. The house is not so desolate and depressing as it is
usually depicted ; the chief objection is the adjoining grave-
yard. The high stone wall with the little gate on the side of
the Church Lane now screens it from the gaze of the passers-
by, and, if Mrs. Bronte had not been delicate when she arrived,
the family might have found great pleasure in the new home.
The Ha worth parsonage was a comparatively new house,
having been built forty-eight years before Patrick Bronte
and his family took possession. The previous vicarage had
been some distance away on the moors, near what was known
as Penistone quarry ; it is still in existence under the name of
Sowdens. There it was that the well-known William Grimshaw
— the friend of Wesley — lived and died. On the left of the
flagged passage of the parsonage leading from the front door was
the combined dining and sitting-room, whilst on the right was
Patrick Bronte's study. Over the sitting-room was the bed-
room in which Charlotte Bronte died, and over the study was
Mr. Bronte's bedroom. A small dressing-room without a
fireplace, and measuring ten feet, including the window recess,
by five feet nine inches, was used as the children's nursery
or study in the early days ; no wonder the six little Brontes
developed consumption. Behind the two bedrooms were two
other small rooms for the children and the servants. On the
ground floor behind the vicar's study was the kitchen, whilst

THE PARSONAGE, HAWORTH 55

the corresponding room behind the family sitting-room was
a small lumber-room, sometimes used as a peat-house, which
Charlotte Bronte tells us she afterwards cleared out and
arranged as a study in 1854 for her husband, the Rev. A. B.
Nicholls.

As the front door opens, it reveals the staircase, with its
old oak bannisters ; to the left is the corner in which Emily
Bronte punished her favourite dog, Keeper. The house is
full of memories, and the old-fashioned window seats remind
readers of Jane Eyre, and of her partiality for hiding herself
in the recesses of the windows.

The parsonage was built about 1774, but the old faded copy
of the house-deed is extremely difficult to decipher, owing to
the indistinct writing and abbreviations. This deed contains
the same conditions with regard to the appointment of minister
as the church-deed of 1559. Thus the parsonage does not come
under the ordinary rules which are usually applied to rectories
and vicarages, which have been conveyed absolutely, and it
is not affected by the " Dilapidations Act " and other similar
Acts. It is exceptional if not unique in this respect.

This, however, was not to the advantage of the tenant in
Mr. Bronte's days, for he repeatedly drew the attention of the
trustees to the insanitary condition of the house, but without
any redress. There were certain rooms which then were
damp and unhealthy. The old vicarage at Sowdens was
much better situated, and it would have been healthier if the
new vicarage had been built near the old one. There is a
reference in one of the registers of the church to the old building.
In 1763 is an entry made by a former minister — the Rev.
Isaac Smith — the last in his beautiful writing —

" May 15th, 1739, at 6 o'clock in the Evening, the Houses in
Haworth called the Parsonage were solemnly Dedicated and
so Named, with Prayers, Aspersions, Acclamations, and
Crossings by I.S.," etc.

The difficulties connected with his appointment to Haworth
tended to make Patrick Bronte reserved and reticent in his
dealings with the trustees and parishioners, and this is the true
explanation of his somewhat unsociable habits at Haworth

56 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

compared with Thornton, where he was free and communica-
tive, always feeling at one with the people, and even with the
Dissenters, who were rather numerous and aggressive. An
additional reason for his change of habit could be attributed
to Mrs. Bronte's illness, which, shortly after leaving Thornton,
was diagnosed as cancer. The result was that visitors could
not be offered hospitality, and the young children had to be
kept quiet for fear of disturbing the invalid mother. Had
she been well and strong, the chances are that the whole family
would have been more sociable, and the shyness, from which
all except the son never escaped, would not have developed
to such an extent that the sight of a strange face became a
positive source of pain to the children, and caused them to
suffer miserably from nervous self -consciousness. Whatever
may have been said against Patrick Bronte in those days,
his early life at Ha worth was full of anxiety and trouble.
The people of the district certainly deserved some of the censure
which Mrs. Gaskell passed on them. In the church register
is a notice concerning a meeting which Mr. Bronte called —

64 Whereas a number of ill-behaved and disorderly persons
have for a long period colleagued together not only to destroy
the property but also to endanger the lives of the peaceful
Inhabitants of the Township, in consequence of which Notice
is hereby given that a Meeting will be held in the Vestry of
this Church on Tuesday the 1st of January, 1822, at 2 o'clock
in the Afternoon, in order to adopt such measures as may be
conducive to Peace and Tranquility."

Ha worth is now a most peaceable and law-abiding place,
and it is possible that the association which Patrick Bronte
formed had something to do in changing the character of the
district, but it is easy to see why he kept up the practice,
which he had begun at Hartshead during the Luddite riots,
of carrying a loaded pistol about with him. It lay on the
dressing table at night, with his watch. In the morning he
discharged it, and then re-loaded it, placing it in his pocket
as he did his watch. He continued this custom to the end
of his life, and, even on his death-bed, he sent for the local
watchmaker to regulate the trigger.

HAWORTH VILLAGE 57

Before the construction of the Worth Valley railway, the
village was more or less isolated, and the villagers, especially
the women, seldom travelled beyond the confines of their own
borders. This isolation fostered a spirit of independence,
which is still a characteristic of the people. Ha worth is
divided into two parts by the railway, which is almost parallel
with the river Worth, thus avoiding any great engineering
difficulties. The old part of Haworth consists of one long,
steep street, the middle of which can be reached from the
station by a rough cinder path, the incline towards the end
being so great as to cause the casual visitor to pause in order
to get breath for the rest of the journey. Vehicles from the
station pass over the railway bridge and then begin to climb
the hill to the church and West Lane on the summit. In
order to assist the horses to get a footing, the stones which
are used for paving the road are set edge-ways, and in des-
cending the hill it is necessary for conveyances to use very
powerful brakes. The opposite side of the valley from the
station is known as The Brow ; it is this part of Haworth
which has developed in recent times, many substantial and
well-built houses having been erected for the artisans who
work at the large mills in this part of the parish.

The old houses and shops have been built close to the road,
with no forecourt, and even many of the new houses, as is
common in industrial districts, are only separated from the
main road by a narrow footpath. Although land is cheap,
little space is allowed for gardens, the somewhat bleak climate,
and the long winter and comparatively short summer, not
being very favourable to the cultivation of flowers or vegetables.

As the carts make their way up the hill, the driver may be
seen firmly holding the bridle and exchanging greetings with
the villagers at the doors of the houses. The windows of the
old cottages are low and wide, since the front rooms were
originally intended for a hand-loom. The ceilings are low,
as is usually the case in cottages built during the early part
of the nineteenth century. The West Riding of Yorkshire
has long been famous for its woollen industry, and in the early
days the hand-loom played a prominent part. One solitary

58 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

hand-loom remains in Haworth, and this is kept as a memento
in a cottage on the moors, and was in use until last year,
when " the owd weaver," Timmy Feather, died ; with him
departed the hand-loom weaving of the Haworth district.

The old part of Haworth, with its houses dotted over the
western slope of the hill, is connected with the moors by West
Lane. The names over the shop doors are essentially York-
shire, and are the same as many which appear in the Bronte
novels.

Mr. G. R. Sims having made a pilgrimage to Haworth in
September, 1903, humorously described his visit in the
Referee, much to the indignation of the villagers, for he
describes Haworth as " the city of the dead." When the
writer inquired about his visit a year or two afterwards, a
sturdy native, adopting a menacing attitude, replied : " Yes
he's been here once, and if ever he comes again he'll get
mobbed ; we don't go to London and then return to Haworth
and write skittish articles about Cockneys."

What struck Mr. G. R. Sims as very peculiar is not difficult
for a Northerner to understand. At the top of the village
street he saw a confectioner's shop with the announcement
" Funeral teas." He entered, with the intention of appeasing
his hunger and adding to his stock of local knowledge. Ad-
dressing the head of the establishment he remarked : " If you
please, ma'am, I want a funeral tea."

" A funeral tea ! " exclaimed the astonished proprietress,
curiously surveying the stranger ; " but there is no funeral
to-day."

Mr. Sims, however, had set his heart on a funeral tea, and
would not be denied ; he had never before heard of the expres-
sion, and was determined to find out what it meant. He
insisted, therefore, upon being served with precisely the kind of
tea which was supplied to a real funeral party ; and now he
strongly recommends all Bronte admirers going to Haworth
to have a funeral tea, assuring them out of the fulness of his
experience that they will not forget it.

Patrick Bronte, with his knowledge of the funeral customs
in Ireland, found no difficulty in complying with the wishes

MAIN STREET. HAWORTH

HAWORTH CUSTOMS 59

of his Ha worth parishioners at any funerals he conducted,
for he describes very graphically an Irish wake in one of his
books. Not only did he conduct the funeral service, but he
frequently attended the meal which followed, departing as
soon as the tea was finished.

Funerals in Haworth even in the poorest homes are con-
ducted with the greatest reverence and decorum, though in
several respects the old customs, which still survive, would
possibly give a wrong impression to a stranger.

The Sunday school processions, followed by a tea, still take
place at Haworth as they did in the Bronte days. In the
diary of the Rev. Henry Nussey, kindly lent to me by Mr.
J. J. Stead of Heckmondwike, is a description of a Yorkshire
Sunday School Anniversary—

"Friday, Aug. 24th (1832). To-day the Church Sunday
School Festival was celebrated. The ladies and gentlemen
connected with the school, the teachers and children, met in
the school at half -past one. A hymn was sung, and prayers
were read by the Vicar, after which the prizes in books were
distributed. All then proceeded to Church, where there
was singing and an address from Mr. W. Heald, jnr., to
parents, teachers, and scholars. They then walked round the
village, and returned to the school, where they sung in the
school-yard, and after this all the scholars were regaled, the
girls with buns and tea, and the boys with buns, beer and
porter. These were afterwards dismissed, and the ladies and
gentlemen sat down with the female teachers, having had
beer and porter, etc. At eight o'clock supper was introduced,
consisting of the Old English cheer, roast beef, plum-pudding
and good beer, to which from 80 to 100 sat down. The day
then concluded with music and singing."

There are even now a few inhabitants of Haworth who
remember Charlotte Bronte presiding at one of the tea-tables,
with her Sunday school scholars as her guests. She found the
ordeal somewhat trying, and escaped as soon as possible. As
the Yorkshire people say, " She took all in," and the descrip-
tion of a Sunday school tea-party in Shirley abundantly proves
how observant she was. Emily did not attend the village

60 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

tea-meetings, nor was she a teacher in the Sunday school,
and yet she was a great favourite, and everybody loved her.
She was the best looking of the three, and possibly her very
reserve was an advantage to her, as she was brought less in
touch with the inhabitants of Haworth, and consequently
she had fewer opportunities of offending them, whilst Charlotte,
as Sunday school teacher, day-school visitor and needle-
work inspector, was considered to be very strict and particular
in dealing with the children.

Good food and plenty has always been the rule in Haworth,
and in this respect Haworth customs differ from those in
Cr an ford, for " elegant economy " was not de rigeur in Haworth,
though the villagers had, and still have, a real genius for saving
money. Thrift is a virtue that everybody practises, and
extravagance a weakness which finds no sympathy in that
moorland village.

If thrift is in the blood of the natives, scrupulous cleanliness
is the outside mark of virtue. Though the working people
wear clogs, and shawls are used by the women as a covering
for the head in no unpicturesque fashion, the homes are
spotlessly clean. There is much to be said both for the clogs
and the shawls in a district which gets an abundant supply
of rain and wind, and where the by-roads are rough and heavy.
As in Cranford, pattens are still worn by the women when
swilling the flags in front of the house or the " yard " at the
back, or when hanging out the clothes.

The old inhabitants of Haworth have always resented
the account which Mrs. Gaskell gave of the village in her
Life of Charlotte Bronte, and they would like the earlier
chapters in the book either entirely erased or re- written.
Visitors come to Haworth to see the Bronte shrines with a firm
prejudice against the place and the people, and there is no
doubt that Mrs. Gaskell in some respects failed to appreciate
much that was worthy both in the place and in the villagers.

The inscriptions on the graves in the old churchyard and
cemetery bear evidence to the general healthiness of the
locality, many octogenarians being buried there.

Mrs. Gaskell records the leaving of the doors open as a fault,

THE HAWORTH MOORS 61

but, as the low windows in many cases were not made to open,
it was to the credit of the people that they breathed the fresh
air by the open door, and it certainly tended to their general
good health and longevity. An open door, a good fire, winter
and summer, which of itself facilitates the ventilation of the
room most used, plenty of plain, wholesome food, with exercise
up and down those rugged hills, and the sound sleep which
followed, made the people a long-lived race. The village is
built mainly on high ground, and is known for miles around
as " Bonnie Ha worth." Now the moors are known as a
health resort, and visitors have difficulty in obtaining accom-
modation in August and September. As Charlotte Bronte
says in Shirley, " Our England is a bonny land, and Yorkshire
is one of her bonniest nooks."

Many who visit Haworth in the summer are charmed with
the beauty of the moors, and are surprised to find the village
very much better than they imagined from what has been
written of it. The parsonage is far from being the miserable
dreary place which it has been pictured. At the present time
the graveyard is hidden by the bushy trees, and the garden
and lawn are well kept. The old fruit trees and currant bushes
which Emily tended so lovingly are gone. In the garden are
the remains of the old stocks which used to be fixed near the
church, but the " gate of the dead " through which the mem-
bers of the Bronte family were carried, from the front door
and along the garden, then through the gate into the church-
yard, has disappeared. This gate was only used in the BrontS
days for funerals from the parsonage. Mrs. Bronte was the
first to be carried through, and Patrick Bronte was the last,
with an interval of forty years.

There is still to be seen in the village the remnant of an old
ducking-stool. It dates back to the time when women were
occasionally treated with much barbarity. It is said to have
been used in Haworth for brawling women and dishonest
bakers. Mr. John B. Smith, the Wesleyan schoolmaster at
Haworth during the Bronte period, had a picture which repre-
sented women being ducked in one of the ponds of the neigh-
bourhood. Mr. Smith was one of those who lived in Haworth

62 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

when the identity of Jane Eyre was discovered, and as secre-
tary of the Mechanics' Institute he wrote to Charlotte Bronte
to tell her that, as an acknowledgment of her gift to the
Institute of a copy of Jane Eyre, the committee had elected
her a life member. Mr. Smith used to tell of Charlotte Bronte
being prevailed upon " to take a tray " at the Institute soire'e,
and how she presided with quiet dignity — scarcely speaking
to anyone but the faithful servant, Martha Brown, whom she
had taken with her to assist in the serving. Mr. Smith
attended Charlotte Bronte's funeral, and he was the possessor
of several Bronte relics, amongst which was an old, well-
thumbed Latin grammar, which had been used by Charlotte.
This former Wesleyan schoolmaster was one of the first to
acclaim Emily Bronte the greatest genius of this remark-
able family, and his daughter was christened Emily Jane in
remembrance of the author of Wuthering Heights.

Mrs. Gaskell mentions the musical talent of the people of the
Ha worth district. This is quite in keeping with the love of
music so characteristic of Yorkshire people in general. The
bracing air, and especially their broad, open vowel sounds,
distasteful as they may be to very refined ears, offer a medium
of voice-training which cannot be equalled in any part of the
country, unless it be among the Welsh hills. Haworth has
long been famous for its interest in music, especially among
its industrial workers. Not being, as a class, specially interested
in literature, they spend the long winter evenings in attaining
proficiency either in singing or in the mastery of some musical
instrument.

Mrs. Bronte's brief life in Haworth only extended over
eighteen months, for, a few months after her arrival at the
parsonage with her six little children, she was taken seriously
ill, and the doctor declared her to be suffering from internal
cancer. Charlotte had just one brief recollection of her,
playing in the twilight with her only boy, in whom probably
she took a greater pride than in her daughters.

Had the mother been well how different it might have
been for those clever children, and yet their very sufferings
seemed necessary to the completion of their lives; what they

DEATH OF MRS. BRONTE 63

learnt in suffering they gave forth in song. Had they not
suffered, they might never have written anything worth adding
to the world's literature. All that is known of Mrs. Bronte is
that she was good, gentle and patient, and in her last trying
illness her husband nursed her tenderly, and she has left on
record that he never gave her an angry word.

The illness was hopeless from the first, and it is not to be
wondered at that the house had to be kept very still, and the
children got into the habit of moving about as quietly as possible.

Maria, the eldest, had to look after the others and help
Nancy and Sarah Garrs as best she could. The old servants
remembered how interested Mrs. Bronte was to the very last
in her children, though she could only see them at intervals,
and one at a time, as it upset her.

The younger servant taught the girls needlework, and
Charlotte is credited with making a chemise at five years old,
and when it was shown to the mother she was much pleased
with her little daughter's neat work.

Mrs. Bronte died on 21st September, 1821, and the little
gate at the end of the garden was opened to let the sad funeral
through. All the Brontes except Anne are buried in Haworth.

Mrs. Bronte's illness had been sufficient excuse for lack of
neighbourliness, and after her death the bereaved husband
had little desire to enter into any society ; his family needed
all the time he could spare from his clerical duties, and the
sociable Vicar of Thornton, who had enjoyed the little tea
parties with his wife at Kipping, became a recluse, and his
children had to find their pleasures on the moors, or in the
kitchen with the servants, the father taking some of his meals
in the little study, and giving lessons to his children there. It
is not a matter for surprise that Mr. Bronte was sad, but in
later years he became very popular in the district.

It was in these early days at Haworth that the children
really began writing, for the father made a practice of telling
them stories to illustrate a geography or history lesson, and they
had to write it out the next morning. Consequently they
thought it out in bed — a habit Charlotte continued all her life
in connection with her stories.

CHAPTER VI

COWAN BRIDGE
JULY, 1824 — JUNE, 1825

THE hamlet of Cowan Bridge — The Clergy Daughters' School —
Memorial tablet— The Rev. W. Cams- Wilson— Mrs. Gaskell's
account — Reasons for sending the Bronte children to the school —
Miss Elizabeth Branwell — Death of Maria and Elizabeth Bronte —
Schools associated with the Brontes — School life at Cowan Bridge —
The school records — The Cove, Silverdale — Withdrawal of the
children from the school — Tunstall Church — Correspondence in
the press concerning Cowan Bridge School.

A VISIT to Cowan Bridge, where part of the Lowood School
of Jane Eyre is still in existence, reveals a beautiful little
hamlet near Kirkby Lonsdale. A drive from the hotel in
Kirkby Lonsdale, where, in the old coaching days the con-
veyance in which the Bronte sisters travelled made its last
halt, takes one over the Devil's Bridge, a narrow stone struc-
ture, which spans the river Lune, and after a quarter of an
hour's drive Cowan Bridge is reached.

The descent from the bridge takes the traveller to the little
hamlet of Cowan Bridge, nestling at the foot of the hill close
by the river Leek, a small tributary of the Lune. The hamlet
is divided by a bridge near what was once the garden of
the Clergy Daughters' School.

Here was the first school to which the Bronte sisters were
sent. It is a pleasant spot even to-day ; the trees shelter the
cottages, and the high hills protect the place from the east
wind.

Through Cowan Bridge the Leeds and Kendal coach used
to pass, and in the days when the Brontes were there it was
busier than now, for not only did the stage coaches pass to
and fro, but the pack-horses were constantly on the road, taking
the wool from the outlying districts to Leeds and Bradford.
The little stream, with the huge stones in its bed, flowing
past the old school, Charlotte Bronte described as her favourite
spot when at Cowan Bridge. Along its banks she used to

COWAN BRIDGE SCHOOL 65

wander, frequently taking off her shoes and stockings and
wading in its waters. Here she was free from intrusion, and
could enjoy her broken day dreams.

In later years she told Mary Taylor how she enjoyed this
beautiful spot, sitting on a stone in the middle of the stream.
Mary told her she should have gone fishing, but she replied
that she had no inclination.

When visiting Cowan Bridge on the anniversary of Charlotte
Bronte's admission to the school it was interesting to find a
commemorative medallion had been fixed on the gable-end
of the cottages, which once formed the rooms for the teachers
of the school. On the medallion are the names of the four
Bronte sisters, with the dates of their stay at the school.

" AT THIS SCHOOL

MARIA
ELIZABETH
CHARLOTTE

EMILY

DAUGHTERS OF THE REV. P. BRONTE
WERE EDUCATED IN 1824-1825"

A large sycamore tree overhangs the end cottage, and on the
opposite side of the road is a small house, now known as
Lowood Cottage. It was formerly the Rev. W. Cams- Wilson's
stable and coach-house ; he was the founder of the Clergy
Daughters' School, and known in Jane Eyre as the black
marble clergyman — Mr. Brocklehurst. In addition to being
the manager of the school, he was vicar of two parishes,
Tunstall and Whittington, which were a few miles apart.

Formerly the old part of the school consisted of one house,
at one time the residence of an old Yorkshire family of the name
of Picard. This building was purchased in 1824 by Mr. Carus-
Wilson, who adapted it as a residence for the teachers of the
school. At right angles to this he added a long building for
a school-room and dormitories for the pupils. Mrs. Gaskell
made a mistake, which many writers on the Brontes have
copied, when she said that this part of the school had once
been a factory for the manufacture of bobbins from the wood
of the alder trees which were abundant in the neighbourhood.

66 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

It was converted, eight years after it was built, into a bobbin
factory, when the Clergy Daughters' School was removed to
Casterton, some two or three miles away on the higher ground.

Charlotte Bronte gives her own graphic description of
Cowan Bridge in Jane Eyre, as she remembered it, twenty-two
years after she left.

It is a pity that Mrs. Gaskell and other writers have com-
mented only on Charlotte Bronte's description of Lowood in
winter, for during her stay from August, 1824, to June, 1825,
she had the benefit both of the autumn and the spring. The
garden was always a source of attraction to her —

" The garden was a wide enclosure, surrounded with walls so
high as to exclude every glimpse of prospect ; a covered
verandah ran down one side, and a broad walk bordered a
middle space divided into scores of little beds : these beds
were assigned as gardens for the pupils to cultivate, and each
bed had an owner."

In these days, when it is considered quite a modern move-
ment to interest children in rural and suburban schools in
gardening, it is well to remember that nearly ninety years ago
the pupils at this school for clergymen's daughters were
encouraged to keep a small plot of garden in good order, so
that they might be interested in such work, and have their
powers of observation improved.

Why and how these children of the Ha worth vicar came to
be pupils at the Cowan Bridge School is easily explained.
Mrs. Bronte had been dead for three years. Even before her
death, if a Thornton authority may be trusted, Maria,
Charlotte's elder sister, when only seven years of age, had been
accustomed to walk from Thornton to Bradford with her
father and, perched on a high stool at the printer's office,
had frequently helped to correct the proofs of his books.
This wonderful child was able to converse with her father on
any leading topic of the day with as much freedom and pleasure
as a grown person — so Mr. Bronte informed Mrs. Gaskell.
After the mother's death Maria had to act as house-mother,
assisting in the education of the five younger children, and
keeping the nursery in order.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH MARY BURDER 67

But it is evident that Maria was too young to superintend
the home ; the children needed some one to take their mother's
place, and Mr. Bronte certainly did his best to provide a suit-
able stepmother. He appealed to Miss Elizabeth Bran well,
his wife's elder sister. Having known Mr. Bronte through her
visits to Thornton, and having a very sincere interest in her
sister's children, she left her home in Penzance for ever, and
came " with her best japanned dressing-box, her inlaid work-
boxes, her fashionable dresses, and big fancy caps " to cold,
bleak Haworth, in order to fulfil what was said to be a sacred
promise to her dead sister to look after her nephew and five
nieces. Although Miss Branwell had charge of the Bronte
home for about twenty years, either she had no intention at first
of remaining at Haworth or she found the task too great, for
about this time Mr. Bronte proposed to Miss Firth, a lady of
means, and a good friend of the Brontes when living at
Thornton. She was also the godmother of the second and
youngest daughters. But Mr. Bronte was unsuccessful,
though Miss Firth always took an interest in the Brontes,
even after she married the Rev. Charles Franks of Hudders-
field, and in her diary, which is still in existence, she states
that, when on her honeymoon, she visited Maria, Elizabeth
and Charlotte Bronte at Cowan Bridge School, and gave each
of them half-a-crown. Mr. Bronte then approached Mary
Burder, his old sweetheart of the Wethersfield days, who
was still unmarried, a pleasant, homely woman of thirty-eight.

It was in 1823 that Mr. Bronte* wrote to Mary Burder and,
as Mr. Birrell says, " besought her to be his wife and the mother
of his six motherless children." The correspondence which
passed between Mr. Bronte and Mary Burder, after the death
of Mrs. Bronte has recently been published by Mr. Shorter
in The Sphere. From these letters it is evident that Mary
Burder considered that she had not been treated honourably
by Patrick Bronte when a curate at Wethersfield, and she
unhesitatingly refused to entertain his proposal in 1823. His
first letter is dated April 23rd, 1823, and was directed to Mrs.
Burder, and in it he tells the story of his life since leaving
Wethersfield, entering into detail with regard to his position

68 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

at Ha worth. The second letter was to Mary Burder herself,
and was dated July 28th, 1823, and in it he requests permis-
sion to call upon her, after referring to the death of his wife
and to his " small but sweet little family," and adding " I
must say that my ancient love is rekindled." The reply,
which was long and dated August 8th, 1823, was not only a
refusal, but one couched in such terms as must have surprised
Patrick Bronte. She thanks Providence which " withheld
me from forming in very early life an indissoluble engagement
with one whom I cannot think was altogether clear of duplicity."

After an interval of eighteen months, Mr. Bronte again
requested permission to wait upon her, but in the
meantime Mary Burder had married the Dissenting minister
of Wethersfield, and the letter remained unanswered.

After Mr. Bronte's failure to obtain a wife, he appears to
have given up all ideas of matrimony and Miss Branwell took
her place as housekeeper in the home ; she had an income of
fifty pounds a year, and preferred to pay her own expenses,
so as not to add to the burden of the household. She had the
mid- Victorian woman's respect for " the cloth," and it is
said she agreed better with men than with women, enjoying
the visits of the neighbouring clergy.

She was never popular with the servants, and the children
were not in the habit of regarding her with affection, for she
was prim, severe, and " a bit of a tyke," as one of the servants
told me. All her ideas were fixed when she came to Ha worth,
and it was difficult for her to fit in with this strange household.
She thought her nieces peculiar to prefer books and animals
to new dresses and gossip. These girls puzzled her, remem-
bering her own happy days in Penzance. Her nieces were
awkward and shy. Elizabeth, her namesake, was gentle like
the Branwells : Maria was untidy : Charlotte was most
excitable and hot-tempered : Emily had " the eyes of a half-
tamed creature," and cared for nobody's opinion, only being
happy with her animal pets. Miss Branwell found her greatest
joy in baby Anne, and in the handsome Branwell, who was to
be the pride of the family.

Those who once remembered her told the writer that she

MISS ELIZABETH BRANWELL 69

was never to be seen without a shoulder shawl, and several
of these shawls are still in existence. Shades of purple and
mauve were her favourite colours. Her caps, if large, were
always dainty, and her dresses good and becoming — a black
silk being her favourite for afternoon wear. Fine dresses
were not suitable for the stone floors and rough roads of
Haworth, but in order to keep her dainty shoes dry and avoid
the damp floors she was in the habit of wearing pattens,
much to the annoyance of her nieces, whose sensitive nerves
were irritated by the constant and peculiar click of the iron
rings on the stone floors. Though the children — except,
perhaps, Anne and Branwell — never came to love her, they
respected her, and her word was law.

Miss Branwell deserves praise for her housekeeping and the
careful training which the Bronte girls received in domestic
arts especially needlework. Her bedroom became the training-
ground, where they stitched and mended their clothes, and
learned how to darn neatly and knit their own stockings,
whilst in the kitchen they learned to cook, make bread, and
manage the ironing of the household linen. Miss Branwell's
bent towards the practical side of life was of great advantage
in a home where the daughters possessed such highly developed
imaginative powers. The careful management of the house-
hold relieved Mr. Bronte from much anxiety, and he appreciated
Miss Branwell's desire " to maintain her dignity " by paying
her own personal expenses. The old servants said she took
most of her meals in her own bedroom, which was really a bed
sitting-room, and Mr. Bronte decided to have his chief meals
in his study. The six children were thus left very frequently
to get their meals in the kitchen with the servants, so that
the family sitting-room was left neat and clean to receive the
clergymen and their wives when they called at the vicarage.

It was at this time that Patrick Bronte tried the experiment
of testing his children's reasoning powers by setting them to
answer questions without any previous preparation. It was
with pardonable pride that he wrote to Mrs. Gaskell an account
of an examination he gave them, when she was preparing the
biography of Charlotte.

70 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

When Miss Branwell had been with the family about a year,
all the children were very ill ; the two older girls — Maria and
Elizabeth — had measles, followed by whooping-cough. The
younger ones caught the infection, but in a milder form.

On the 30th of January, 1824, a school was opened at Cowan
Bridge, known as The Clergy Daughters' School. Both Maria
and Elizabeth Bronte were promised as pupils, but their illness
prevented them from attending when the school was opened,
and their aunt, anxious to send them with plenty of good
underclothing, kept them at needlework, as the faithful
servant, Nancy Garrs, declared, instead of allowing them to
walk on the moors, and thus regain their health, as the four
younger children did.

Mr. Bronte was much relieved by the opening of the Cowan
Bridge School, for he found it difficult to supervise the educa-
tion of his children, and keep pace with his church duties.
Miss Branwell was also beginning to feel the strain of
superintending this large household.

There is not the slightest doubt that Mr. Carus-Wilson, the
founder, was anxious that the school should prove useful,
and supply a long-felt need. The prospectus sent out stated
the terms for education, board and lodging, and, as these were
very low, several clergymen in different parts of England
eagerly availed themselves of the opportunity of securing a
good training for their daughters.

The Rev. Patrick Bronte seems to have been anxious to
secure his elder daughter's admission to the school at the
earliest possible time, and Maria and Elizabeth were sent there
at the beginning of the second quarter, in July, for in those
days there were four terms to the school year. The superin-
tendent of the school hesitated to admit the two Brontes, who
had not sufficiently recovered from their illness to warrant
their mixing with the other scholars of the school. Instead
of being sent to school they needed a long holiday, which the
aunt and the father ought surely to have known. It is quite
possible, however, that it was thought a change of air would
be beneficial, and that they would be better in the sheltered
valley of Cowan Bridge than in the bleak and breezy Haworth.

SCHOOLS ATTENDED BY THE BRONTES 71

Mr. Bronte not only took his two girls himself by the coach
which they joined at Keighley, but he slept and had his food
at the school for the night, and no doubt left quite satisfied
in his mind with the food and accommodation.

The reputation of every school associated with the Brontes
has been branded as with hot irons — Cowan Bridge, perhaps,
faring the worst. Charlotte Bronte spoke of Miss Wooler's
school at Dewsbury as " a poisoned place for me," and Law
Hill, where Emily was for two and a half years, as a place of
slavery — " hard work from six in the morning to eleven at
night." The pensionnat at Brussels suffered considerably
as being a school where craft and espionage were practised
by the head-mistress. Similarly the homes in which the
Bronte sisters were employed as governesses were also be-
smirched : Stonegappe, where Charlotte was engaged by
Mrs. Sidgwick, was miserable : Upperwood, Rawdon, where
Charlotte lived for some time, was a prison ; Anne's stay at
Blake Hall and the rectory of the Rev. Edmund Robinson
yielded nothing but thorns. Bran well was dismissed from
Thorpe Green, and in his case the fault was attributed to his
employers.

Much sympathy has been expended on the Bronte children
on account of the hard times which they experienced, and yet
pupils who were at the same schools at the same time had a
very different tale to tell. That the schools of nearly a cen-
tury ago differed from those of to-day is certain, but they
were not wholly bad, though the methods were frequently
more mechanical, and the treatment of the children less
sympathetic than is usual to-day. Almost every child in
those times could remember cases of injustice, and even
of ill-treatment, especially when judged by the standards of
a later period. The day of the child had not arrived, nor had
the country awakened to the fact that the child was the
nation's greatest asset.

The Brontes were never adapted for school life ; they were
shy, awkward, and reserved, and unable or unwilling to join
in the games. Their minds had been fed on the books in their
father's library, including what Charlotte called Mad Methodist

72 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Magazines from Penzance. In this and in other ways, they
were ill-prepared to benefit by their school life at Cowan
Bridge. In addition they were delicate, with more than
average brain power and yet feeble bodies, which left them
with unstrung nerves and a temperament such that they were
seldom in a happy frame of mind. Their happiest moments
were when they were rambling over the moors, away from the
sound of human voices. There they could be themselves —
playing in the brook, peeping into the hedge-sparrow's nest,
swinging on the low branches of the trees, or lying on the
grass gazing on the sky, which they were fond of doing by day,
and star-gazing at night. It is necessary that the outlook of
these uncommon children should be considered, before blaming
their teachers or employers.

Charlotte Bronte describes the Clergy Daughters' School at
Cowan Bridge in Jane Eyre, under the name of Lowood. In
that description there is much that is true, and there is also
much that is untrue. The two Miss Brocklehursts, who were
said to be " dressed grandly," and who called at the school to
see the children at Lowood, are represented as the daughters
of the superintendent, Mr. Brocklehurst. These ladies could
not possibly represent the daughters of the Rev. W. Carus-
Wilson, whose little girls were at that time in the nursery,
and yet everyone knows that " the black marble clergyman "
was intended for Mr. Carus-Wilson ; and they take it for
granted that the grandly dressed ladies were his daughters.

The harm that Charlotte Bronte did to the school, by her
version in Jane Eyre, was extremely small, and whatever
ill-feeling may have been roused had died down by 1857, when
Mrs. Gaskell published the Life of Charlotte Bronte. Her
account was unjust, and it served no good purpose to revive
the trouble, for, while a certain amount of licence is always
allowed to a novelist, it was a different matter when the
statements reflecting on the school were given in the " Life,"
which had to deal with facts.

Mrs. Gaskell was certainly hard on the founder of the
Institution, Mr. W. Carus-Wilson, and although she knew that
Charlotte Bronte regretted having written what she did,

MRS. GASKELL AND COWAN BRIDGE SCHOOL 73

when the place had been identified, Mrs. Gaskell made matters
worse by calling attention to a worthy institution, which had
been unfortunate in its management in the early months of
its existence. Her statements were not always accurate,
as may be seen, for instance, in the dates she gives for the
arrival and departure of the Bronte girls ; in fact, in checking
Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte, one cannot help feeling
that in some respects she failed to exercise ordinary care in
her research work. Had she asked to see the admission register
of the school, she would have saved Mr. Bronte from some
abuse and seeming want of consideration for his children.
Though the school was transferred to Casterton, in 1832,
owing to the inadequacy of the Cowan Bridge premises, the
old register is still in existence, and it is there stated that
Maria Bronte, aged ten years, and Elizabeth, aged nine years,
were admitted to the school on 21st July, 1824. Maria left
in ill-health on 14th February, 1825, gradually wasting away
until she died on 6th May, 1825. Elizabeth left on 31st May,
1825, and died, owing to the same cause, on 15th June, 1825.

Mrs. Gaskell conveys the impression that both died of
typhoid fever as the result of the unhealthiness of the school.
From the dates previously mentioned, it is seen that Maria
was at home for three months before her death. As a matter
of fact, neither of the Bronte children had fever. Strange
to say, Mrs. Gaskell mentions that Maria died a few days after
Mr. Bronte brought her home by the Leeds coach. Elizabeth
died nearly six weeks after her sister, though she did not arrive
at home until nearly a month after Maria's death. It is plain
to see that Mrs. Gaskell fixed some of her dates by Jane Eyre,
taking it for granted that the treatment of Helen Burns was
literally true.

Referring to the harsh treatment which Maria — the Helen
Burns of Jane Eyre — received whilst at school at the hands of
Miss Scatcherd, who was early identified as a Miss Andrews —
one of the teachers of the school — Mrs. Gaskell says —

M I only wonder that she (Charlotte) did not remonstrate
against her father's decision to send her and Emily back to
Cowan Bridge, after Maria's and Elizabeth's deaths."

74 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTfiS

This not only reflects on the school, but also would indicate,
if accurate, most callous conduct on the part of Mr. Bronte
and the aunt, Miss Branwell. It was a fact that a low fever
had broken out at the school in the Spring, when Maria and
Elizabeth were first taken seriously ill, and though they did
not take the fever, they were so ill that they had to return
home ; but to the honour of Mr. Bronte, not only did he not
send Charlotte and Emily back to Cowan Bridge School, but
such was his anxiety at losing one daughter, and receiving
another almost in a dying state, that he sent, or probably
went himself, for Charlotte and Emily and brought them home
the very next day after Elizabeth's return, keeping all his
children at home for the following six years, teaching them
scripture and secular subjects generally, whilst Miss Branwell
was responsible for their progress in needlework and house-
wifery. It may be suggested that Mr. Bronte should have
protested against Mrs. Gaskell's reflection on his conduct in
connection with this Cowan Bridge incident, but it must be
remembered that, when The Life of Charlotte Bronte was written,
he was an old man of over eighty years of age, and not likely
to be much concerned to defend his character. It is a pity
that in subsequent editions the error has been repeated, for
many writers on the Brontes have continued to make this
charge against Mr. Bronte until it has become to be con-
sidered the absolute truth. The old register shows that
Charlotte, aged eight, entered the school on 10th August, 1824,
and left on 1st June, 1825, and Emily, aged six and a quarter,
became a pupil on 25th November, 1824, and was withdrawn
on 1st June, 1825, with her sister — neither of them returning
again to Cowan Bridge.

There is a report in the admission register for each of the
Bronte children, opposite to their names. This can still be
seen by the courtesy of the Governor of The Clergy Daughters'
School at Casterton —

"Maria Bronte, aged 10£ (daughter of Patrick Bronte,
Haworth, near Keighley, Yorks), July 21st, 1824 : Reads toler-
ably. Writes pretty well. Ciphers a little. Works very
badly. Knows a little grammar, geography and history. Has

SCHOOL RECORDS 75

made some progress in reading French, but knows nothing of
the language grammatically. Left February 14, 1825, in
ill-health, and died May 6, 1825."

It is no wonder that the child worked badly, by which is
probably meant that her needlework was inferior. As her
mother died in 1821, she had been a little drudge to her younger
sisters. She was the only child of the family that could
remember much of Mrs. Bronte ; it had fallen to her lot to
keep the younger children quiet in the little tireless box-room
next to the mother's sick room. " Those who knew her then
described her as grave, thoughtful, and quiet, to a degree far
beyond her years. Her childhood was no childhood/'

The school record of Elizabeth Bronte, of whom we know
the least, reads —

" Elizabeth Bronte, age 9. (Vaccinated. Scarlet fever.
Whooping cough.) Reads little. Writes pretty well. Ciphers
none. Works very badly. Knows nothing else. Left in
ill-health, May 31, 1825. Died June 15, 1825, in decline."

There is little to tell of Elizabeth, but the teacher, Miss Evans —
the Miss Temple of Jane Eyre — wrote to Mrs. Gaskell saying —

"The second, Elizabeth, is the only one of the family of
whom I have a vivid recollection, from her meeting with a
somewhat alarming accident, in consequence of which I had
her for some days and nights in my bedroom, not only for the
sake of greater quiet, but that I might watch over her myself.
Her head was severely cut, but she bore all the consequent
suffering with exemplary patience, and by it won much upon
my esteem. Of the two younger ones (if two there were)
I have very slight recollections, save that one, a darling child,
under five years of age, was quite the pet nursling of the school."

This last would be Emily ; Charlotte was considered the
most talkative of the sisters — a " bright, clever little child."

Charlotte Bronte's report is interesting —

"Entered school August 10, 1824. Writes indifferently.
Ciphers a little, and works neatly. Knows nothing of grammar,
geography, history, or accomplishments. Altogether clever
of her age, but knows nothing systematically. Left school
June 1, 1825. Governess."

76 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Emily BrontS's report reads as follows —

"Entered Nov. 25, 1824, age 5|. Reads very prettily,
and works a little. Left June 1, 1825. Subsequent career,
governess." The age should have been 6J-.

She appears to have received good reports in every case from
her schools.

For each of the four children Mr. Bronte paid on entrance
£7, and £4 for books and clothing, and in 1825, £7 for three of
the girls, £3 for French and Drawing for Maria, and £1 14s. 8d.
for extra clothing, besides 18s. 7-J-d. for " clothes for Miss
Charlotte," and 13s. for Emily.

When Maria was sent home ill she travelled under the care
of Mrs. Hardacre, and in the school account book appear
these items —

Elizabeth's fare home, guard and coachman . 13 0
Mrs. Hardacre's fare . . . . 18 0
Horse, gig, pikes and men . . .26
Mrs. Hardacre's bed at Keighley . ,10
2 letters 1 4£

It was the custom at the Clergy Daughters' School to ask
for the prospective career of each girl when she entered the
school. Much has been said of the touching, but harrowing
description of the death of Helen Burns (Maria Bronte).
Mrs. Gaskell says —

" I need hardly say that Helen Burns is as exact a transcript
of Maria Bronte as Charlotte's wonderful power of reproducing
character could give."

That could hardly be true, as Charlotte did not leave school
until three weeks after Maria's death, but it is very probable
that the description of the death of Helen Burns is really
founded on that of Elizabeth, as Charlotte was at home during
the last fortnight of Elizabeth's illness. Only Anne and
Branwell were at home when Maria died, and Anne was too
young to remember it, but Branwell never forgot it ; he
mentions his sister's death years afterwards, and he wrote a
poem to her memory, entitled Caroline.

The letter from Miss Evans to Mrs. Gaskell, just quoted, tells
of Elizabeth on one occasion being cared for in her bedroom,

SCHOOL FEES 77

and in Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte relates a similar incident
concerning Helen Burns, who is supposed to have died at
school in the arms of Jane Eyre. In later years, Charlotte
Bronte told her fellow-pupils at Roe Head of the effect which
the death of her sister Elizabeth had on her.

Mrs. Gaskell made too much of the Cowan Bridge School,
and the first part of the biography of Charlotte Bronte goes
far too much into detail, as if the writer was afraid that she
would not have sufficient material for the work. It is clear
that Mr. Bronte intended that Charlotte and Emily would
return to school, for his account was not closed till Sept. 23,
when he was allowed an abatement of nearly £] on Maria's
and Elizabeth's account, and £5 2s. 4d. for clothing.

It is only fair to the memory of Charlotte Bronte to quote
what she said to Mrs. Gaskell —

" Miss Bronte more than once said to me, that she should
not have written what she did of Lowood in Jane Eyre, if she
had thought the place would have been so immediately identi-
fied with Cowan Bridge, although there was not a word in her
account of the institution but what was true at the time when
she knew it ; she also said that she had not considered it
necessary, in works of fiction, to state every particular
with the impartiality that might be required in a court of
justice, nor to seek out motives, and make allowances for human
feelings, as she might have done, if dispassionately analys-
ing the conduct of those who had the superintendence of the
institution. I believe she herself would have been glad of
an opportunity to correct the over-strong impression which was
made upon the public mind by her vivid picture, though even
she, suffering her whole life long, both in heart and body,
from the consequences of what happened there, might have
been apt, to the last, to take her deep belief in facts for the
facts themselves — her conception of truth for the absolute
truth."

If it be granted that Charlotte Bronte considered her own
case as bad as it was represented in Jane Eyre, it must be
remembered that the hardship from the cold weather could
only refer to the winter months. She went to the school

78 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

on 10th August, and generally the autumn in that part of
Yorkshire is the best time of the year.

The founder of the school — the Rev. W. Carus- Wilson — had
charge of two churches, with two residences, one at Casterton
Hall, near Tunstall, and one at Silverdale, a few miles away.
Though not really a wealthy man, he had ample means, and
was generous to the school, which only started with sixteen
pupils, though Mrs. Gaskell gives nearly a hundred as the
number. As a fact, until the time when Charlotte Bronte
left in June, 1825, only fifty-three girls had been admitted,
and the fees would, consequently, not by any means cover the
expenses, so that it was necessary to ask for subscriptions
towards the cost of maintaining the school.

At " The Cove " — Mr. W. Carus- Wilson's sea-side home at
Silverdale — the children from the Clergy Daughters' School
sometimes passed their holidays, and whilst pupils at Cowan
Bridge, Charlotte and Emily Bronte were sent to this beautiful
old house on the shores of Morecambe Bay. In the house is
a room, known as " The Bronte room," which is kept just as
it was when Charlotte Bronte occupied it as a bedroom. One
of the two windows overlooks a fine lawn. A relative of
Mr. W. Carus-Wilson informed the writer that Charlotte and
Emily Bronte were sent there on 31st May, 1825, the day when
their sister, Elizabeth Bronte, left Cowan Bridge School, owing
to her serious illness. It was said that the Rev. Patrick
Bronte was so alarmed when his daughter arrived at the
Haworth Vicarage, that he set off post haste and brought the
other two daughters from " The Cove " to Haworth. This
would account for the statement that Charlotte never saw
the sea until years later, although the waves, at high tide,
washed against the walls of the garden at " The Cove," but the
windows in the Bronte bedroom look in an opposite direction.
Charlotte saw the sea for the first time at Bridlington, when
she visited that sea-side resort in company with Ellen Nussey.

Not more than ten minutes walk from this house is the
Lindeth Tower — now known as the Gibraltar Tower — where,
thirty-one years later, Mrs. Gaskell wrote the " Life " of this
quiet little girl, who spent just one night in Silverdale.

REV. W. CARUS-WILSON 79

Charlotte Bronte retained for nearly twenty years a lively
recollection of her first journey from Ha worth, when she was
but eight years old. It would be necessary to rise early to
catch the Leeds and Kendal coach as it passed through
Keighley. It is very probable that her father accompanied
her as far as Keighley, and her two sisters, Maria and Elizabeth,
would be ready to receive her at the Cowan Bridge School.

From Keighley the coach would go by Skipton and Eshton
Hall where Miss Currer lived. She was noted for her great
collection of books, probably the envy of Charlotte Bronte who,
when anxious to find a nom de guerre to hide her identity,
chose Currer as her first name. From Eshton Hall, the coach
would proceed through Giggleswick to Ingleton, at the foot
of Ingleborough. To the little traveller, having seen little
beyond Haworth, some of these places through which the
coach passed would appear almost like important towns.

In 1857, when the Life of Charlotte Bronte was issued, there
were many letters in the press concerning the treatment of
the little Brontes whilst staying at the Cowan Bridge School.
That Mr. Cams- Wilson made several mistakes in the early
days is not to be wondered at, and that he was very strict and
narrow concerning religious matters was only in keeping with
the times. Some of those subjects, such as " hell fire," " sin "
and " future punishments," were the common theological
questions of the day, and the Brontes only fared as many
children did in the majority of the Sunday Schools of the land.

The school still keeps the founder's day on the anniversary
of the birthday of Mr. Carus-Wilson, 7th July. A white
marble tablet is placed in the church to his memory, and his
grave in the churchyard is seldom without flowers. Admirers
of the Brontes often visit Casterton, expecting to find it the
original of Lowood, which is four miles away. Charlotte
Bronte knew that Casterton succeeded Cowan Bridge, and she
speaks highly of it in Jane Eyre.

Had the Brontes been strong and well when they went to
Cowan Bridge they would not have fared so badly. Many
of the old pupils, even some who were at the school
with the Brontes, showed their appreciation by becoming

80 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

subscribers to the school. More than once Charlotte Bronte
accused herself of exaggeration and of scorning those who
were better than herself.

Of Tunstall church, which is described in Jane Eyre as
Brocklebridge, Charlotte Bronte says —

"Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We
had to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our
patron officiated. We set out cold, we arrived at church
colder : during the morning service we became almost paralysed.
It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance of cold
meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion observed
in our ordinary meals, was served round between the services.
At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed
and hilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing over a
range of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin
from our faces."

This church at Tunstall was only used by the pupils of Cowan
Bridge School for the first year of the school's existence. A
few months after the opening of the school a meeting of the
trustees of the Leek chapel, a chapel of ease, was held, and it
was decided to enlarge it to accommodate the pupils. This
place of worship was within half a mile of the school, and when
the alterations were completed the pupils were taken there
on Sundays. It was unfortunate that the Bronte children
were at Cowan Bridge during the only winter when it was
necessary for the pupils to attend the Sunday services at the
Tunstall church.

The walk to this church was through a beautiful country
district, and, in fine weather, the journey must have been
very pleasant. Other pupils who were at school with the
Brontes said that they do not remember a single case of scholars
having their feet wet through the walk, as the pupils wore
clogs, which kept their feet much drier than boots or shoes
would have done.

It is difficult to understand how the pupils could be cold
when they started and colder still when they arrived at church.
This could hardly be literally true, as the very exercise of
walking would tend to raise the temperature of the body,

TUNSTALL CHURCH 81

especially as Miss Temple, the teacher in charge, is represented
as walking lightly and rapidly, as Charlotte Bronte says,
"encouraging us, by precept and example, to keep up our
spirits, and march forward, as she said, ' like stalwart soldiers/ '
Charlotte Bronte was a novelist, and had to make her heroine
suffer, but she also made the greatly respected family of Mr.
Carus- Wilson suffer, and his descendants resent it to-day.

According to the old registers, the girls in winter wore thick
purple dresses and short capes, whilst on cold or wet days they
had green plaid cloaks and pattens. The hair was cropped,
and night caps were worn, but pocket handkerchiefs do not
appear in the list of clothing. On week days brown holland
pinafores were worn and white ones on Sundays. In summer,
the girls had green and white straw bonnets trimmed with
green calico, buff dresses of nankeen, with short sleeves and
high necks, white cotton stockings and strong shoes.

White bonnets were worn on Sundays, trimmed with purple,
and white dresses with low necks and short sleeves, and for
church white cotton gloves were supplied.1

Many pilgrims visit Tunstall church because of its associa-
tion with the Brontes and the Bronte literature. The little
chamber over the porch, where the scholars ate their lunch
between morning and afternoon service, is usually pointed out.
As the galleries have been demolished, it is not possible for
visitors to enter the room.

The letter from one of the teachers at Cowan Bridge School
probably sums up the question fairly —

" I have not the least hesitation in saying that, upon the
whole, the comforts were as many, and the privations as few at
Cowan Bridge as can well be found in so large an establishment.
How far young, or delicate children are able to contend with
the necessary evils of a public school is, in my opinion, a very
grave question, and does not enter into the present discussion."

Some bitter correspondence passed in the Halifax papers
after the publication of Mrs. GaskelFs Life of Charlotte Bronte,
in which the Rev. A. B. Nicholls defended his late wife,
Charlotte Bronte.

1 Notes on the Clergy Daughters' School by M. Williams.

6 — (2200)

CHAPTER VII

HAWORTH

1825-1831

THE Bronte children return to Haworth — Their home life and educa-
tion— Tabitha Aykroyd — Early compositions by the Bront€s —
Sale of autograph manuscripts — Dramatisation of stories.

THE middle of June found the family at the parsonage re-
united, though two, Maria and Elizabeth, had passed through
" the little gate of death " at the end of the garden, and found
an early grave by the side of their mother in the vault in the
old church.

Charlotte was now called upon to take the role of her elder
sister, and though only nine years of age, some responsibility
in the home rested upon her little shoulders. Another servant
had to be engaged, and Mr. Bronte and Miss Branwell deter-
mined to undertake the education of the children. Anne
was now five years old, Emily seven, and Branwell eight.
The four children went each morning to their father's little
study on the ground floor, where they received lessons in
scripture, the three R's, a little history, and, strange to say,
politics — the vicar using his old school books. In some of
the exercise books, remembering his schoolmaster days, Mr.
Bronte wrote : " Everything that is written in this book must
be clear and legible."

Of these six years there is little that is recorded, but it was
the period when the children formed their ideas, which bore
fruit in later times. Even at this early stage, they were
accustomed to keep household records, stating where each
member of the family was, and what each was doing. In
the summer months they wandered over the moors — their
one place of recreation.

Charlotte had not forgotten these uneventful days when she
wrote Jane Eyre, for in Chapter X she says —

" Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my
insignificant existence : to the first ten years of my life, I have

TABITHA AYKROYD 83

given almost as many chapters. But this is not to be a regular
autobiography : I am only bound to invoke memory where I
know her responses will possess some degree of interest ;
therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost in silence :
a few lines only^are necessary to keep up the links of connection."

The last paragraph points to the fact that Miss Bran well,
and not Mrs. Sidgwick, was the original of Mrs. Reed, for
Charlotte Bronte did not meet Mrs. Sidgwick until 1839, and
the reference to " responses that possess some degree of
interest " is most probably the result of Mr. Williams' letter
sent when The Professor was refused because it was not suffici-
ently interesting. The great event of this year of 1825 in the
Bronte household, after the sad death of the older girls, was
the installation of Tabitha Aykroyd as the chief servant.
She was a native of Haworth — a woman of fifty-three — and
five years older than Mr. Bronte. Miss Branwell, who was
far from strong, and had to keep to her room upstairs, needed
a good housekeeper. Thus it became necessary to have a
capable woman in the kitchen, and " Old Tabby," as she came
to be called, ruled not only the kitchen but the whole house-
hold. She had a will of her own, and she afforded the girls
a new field of observation. She was, undoubtedly, the original
of " Hannah," the old servant in Jane Eyre, and she also
appears in Wuthering Heights. The children became greatly
attached to her.

Tabitha Aykroyd was a characteristic Yorkshire woman,
faithful and true, but brusque to a fault, she ruled the household
well. She had many tales to tell of the bairns, who sometimes
nearly frightened her out of her wits with their outlandish
games and strange little plays. She stayed with the Bronte"
family for over thirty years, with one short break, dying only
a few weeks before Charlotte Bronte at the age of eighty-four,
though Mrs. Gaskell in one of her unpublished letters gives
her age as ninety-four. Much to the regret of the family,
she did not end her days at the old parsonage, but, on account
of the anxiety caused by Charlotte Bronte's illness, both Mr.
Bronte and Mr. Nicholls thought it best to remove her to her
friend's house in Sun Street, Haworth, at the lower end of the

84 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

village, where she died. She is buried in the churchyard,
just beyond the wall of the parsonage garden ; the housemaid,
Martha Brown, succeeded her, and lived at the vicarage until
the vicar's death. Tabby was the confidante of the girls,
who were often to be found in her kitchen, helping with the
baking and ironing, or inducing her to tell them the fairy tales
of the glens, and the ghost stories connected with the desolate
houses on the moors between Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Tabby seemed to have read Richardson's Pamela, which
foreshadowed Jane Eyre, though Jane depended on her
intellect more than her beauty in attracting her master.

Emily Bronte did well to make Nelly Dean the narrator of
Withering Heights. She had often sat listening to Tabby in
the parsonage kitchen, for the old servant was a good tale-teller,
speaking always in the broad Yorkshire dialect, which both
Charlotte and Emily have used when writing of her in their
novels.

It was well that Cowan Bridge did not prove congenial, for
their education at home was much more suited to their delicate
constitutions. The regular daily routine was family prayers,
breakfast, lessons in the father's study, early dinner, walk
on the moors, Tabby going with them, and often carrying
little Anne over the rough places ; then back to tea in the
spotless kitchen, followed by sewing for the older girls in the
aunt's room — the father or aunt often reading the newspaper
to them or discussing books or politics. It is not surprising
that in later days they could write books which startled the
reading world. Charlotte, the chronicler of the household,
says —

" We take two, and see three newspapers a week. We take
the Leeds Intelligencer, Tory, and the Leeds Mercury, Whig,
edited by Mr. Baines, and his brother, son-in-law, and his two
sons, Edward and Talbot. We see the John Bull ; it is a
high Tory, very violent. Mr. Driver lends us it, as likewise
Blackwood's Magazine, the most able periodical there is. The
Editor is Mr. Christopher North, an old man seventy-four
years of age ; the 1st of April is his birthday ; his company
are Timothy Tickler, Morgan O'Doherty, Macrabin Mordecai,

SALE OF BRONTE MANUSCRIPTS 85

Mullion, Warnell, and James Hogg, a man of most extraordinary
genius, a Scottish shepherd."

It was at this time that the children began to commit their
ideas to writing, and many of their little manuscripts, written
at this time, are extant. Charlotte wrote the most, and Bran-
well came next, so far as can be judged. Either the younger
sisters wrote much less than Charlotte, or they destroyed their
early manuscripts, for there is nothing written by Emily or
Anne at this time that has been brought to light.

On 31st May, 1912, in London, six autograph fragments
of these children's early work were sold in separate lots. The
bidding was remarkably keen for each item, and the sale
realised £76. One was a small page of Emily's poetry, beginning,
" May flowers are opening," and consisting of eight four-lined
verses, written on a slip of thin paper, in her sloping, printed
characters, and measuring 3f inches by 2J- inches. It was
signed E. J. Bronte, and was dated 25th Jan., 1839. This
manuscript was sold for £14 5s. Another was a short, un-
published poem by Charlotte Bronte, signed and dated llth
Dec., 1831, and beginning, " The trumpet has sounded, its
voice is gone forth." It covered two and a half small pages
of thin paper, 3£ inches by 2f inches, in writing which was
quite microscopic in size. This poem is not included in any
list of Charlotte Bronte's works, and it realised £24 10s. There
was also an undated autograph manuscript of two pages,
3J inches by 2£ inches, consisting of about seventy lines,,
evidently being a fragment of a story by Charlotte Bronte.
It told of a traveller going to an inn and staying for the night,
much in the style of Lock wood going to stay at The Grange
in Wuthering Heights. This was sold for £6 15s.

A further autograph manuscript by Charlotte Bronte,
signed and dated llth Feb., 1830, though the printed catalogue
referred to the date as 1820, the figure three not being very
distinct, realised £5 5s.

A curious feature of the sale was the high price obtained
for the two manuscripts written by Branwell Bronte, who has
been discarded, and considered unfit to be associated with
his sisters, either as an author or a brother. There was,

86 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

however, quite as keen competition for his manuscripts as for
the others. The first offered for sale was The Rising of the
Angrians, covering twenty pages, 6£ inches by 3£ inches, with
about twenty lines to the page, and signed and dated 7th Jan.,
1836. It was written in printed characters, which very much
resembled Emily's hand-printing, and was sold for £13.

The second manuscript by Branwell was entitled The Liar
Detected. The word " unmasked " had been altered to
" detected " in the manuscript. It consisted of twelve pages,
in the form of a very little book — 2£ inches by 2 inches, with
about twenty-eight lines to a page. It was signed at the end
" Captain J. Bud," and, with Bran well's love of conceit, two
other books by Captain Bud were mentioned — one, a work in
three volumes, priced at £3 3s., and the other in ten volumes
at £10 10s. One was referred to as A History on Political
Economy.

This hand-made book was most interesting, as it showed that
Branwell was one of the little band of authors in the remote
parsonage in the early days. The tiny pages were stitched
together — probably by Charlotte — and a cover was made
from the back of an old copy book. On the cover was a pencil
drawing of an old man, most likely the work of Branwell.
Some coarse, purple sugar paper, used in those days, was
pasted to the cover to make it firmer, and the leaves and cover
were stitched together with grey worsted, commonly used at
that time for knitting stockings. This small book realised at
the sale £12 15s. That these two small efforts from Bran well's
pen should be worth £25 15s., considering that he never
succeeded in getting anything published during his lifetime, is
no doubt due to the fame of his sisters, and yet, as these two
stories show, he had ability which would have been recognised
earlier, if he had persevered, and refrained from strong drink.

When it is remembered that the book of poems by Charlotte,
Emily and Anne Bronte, published in 1846 at their own expense
(nearly £50) was a complete failure, only two copies being
sold, it is remarkable that such high prices should be given
for these small items. The fame of the three sisters has
increased, step by step, since the publication of Jane Eyre

DRAMATISATION OF STORIES 87

Emily has waited long for her due recognition, but now her
manuscripts have a greater marketable value than those of
Charlotte; Bran well is more appreciated than formerly, and
possibly in the future Anne will gain in public recognition,
though her work is of an entirely different style, and lacks the
fire of her famous sisters.

It was in 1826 that Charlotte got possession of her mother's
copy of The Imitation of Christ, and this she read regularly,
trying to frame her conduct upon its teaching. The children
learned to read and write almost as easily as they learned to
talk, and their books took the place very largely of young
friends.

It was related in Haworth that one of the trustees of the
church invited the whole group from the parsonage to a birthday
party, in the days following the school life at Cowan Bridge.
Much to the surprise of their little friends, the Bronte children
had no idea of the ordinary games that any village child could
play, such as " hunt the slipper " and " here we go round the
gooseberry bush." Their shyness was painful to behold ;
they were awkward and silent the whole evening, and evidently
greatly relieved when it was time to return home. If they
had been more accustomed to associating with other children,
they could have surprised their friends by acting one of their
own original plays, requiring much more brain power than the
repetition of the usual children's games. In their own home
this was quite a common mode of enjoyment, in which the
servants sometimes joined. On one occasion, on the 29th May,
they determined to act Prince Charles and his escape into
the oak tree. As there was no oak tree in the garden, they
decided that Emily, dressed up to represent the prince, should
get through the bedroom window, and hide in the cherry tree.
This she did not accomplish without breaking off one of the
branches, which caused them much distress, as the tree was
highly prized by their father. To prevent the discovery of
the damage to the tree, one of the servants blacked the broken
end with soot, but Mr. Bronte' found this out, though he was
unable to discover the real culprit.

Much is published nowadays about dramatisation as a

88 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

means of education in schools, but the Bronte children must
have been pioneers of this method nearly a century ago.
From early childhood Charlotte Bronte showed a gift for
acting, and she could write plays with much vigour. In
Villette she says —

" A keen relish for dramatic expression had revealed itself
as part of my nature ; to cherish and exercise this new-found
faculty might gift me with a world of delight, but it would not
do for a mere looker-on at life : the strength and longing must
be put by ; and I put them by, and fastened them in with
the lock of resolution which neither Time nor Temptation
has since picked."

How these children found time to get all the writing done
is marvellous. One of the old servants said that they always
had a pencil in their pocket, and were accustomed to go into
corners of the room to put down their thoughts, sometimes
on odd pieces of cardboard, or on any stray bit of paper. To
read their little stories almost leads one to conclude that they
were written as composition exercises for their father, who,
himself, had always striven to be known as an author, and he,
doubtless, encouraged them in their literary efforts.

The amount of writing accomplished by Charlotte between
1825 and 1830 is amazing ; Mrs. Gaskell estimates it as twenty-
two volumes, quoting Charlotte, who was only fourteen years
old at the time, as her authority. This catalogue of books
completed 3rd August, 1830, includes : Two Romantic Tales
in one volume : Leisure Hours : The Adventures of Ernest
Alembert : An interesting Incident in the Lives of some of the
most Eminent Persons of the Age : Tales of the Islanders, in
four volumes : Characters of Great Men of the Present Age :
The Young Men's Magazine, in six numbers : The Poetaster,
a drama in two volumes : A Book of Rhymes : and
Miscellaneous Poems.

The Rev. A. B. Nicholls has proved that Mrs. Gaskell
greatly underestimated the amount. Altogether about 100
small manuscripts were written by these children at this time,
and at intervals they find their way to the London auction
rooms, and are eagerly bought up by well-known autograph

THE CHILDREN OF THE PARSONAGE 89

dealers. During the month of June, 1913, three tiny
manuscripts were sold.

In addition to writing, the Bronte children practised drawing,
Charlotte and Bran well hoping to become artists. With
writing, drawing and the acting of their little plays, these
children were far from unhappy. Mrs. Gaskell, quoting from a
letter by Miss Evans, which referred to Charlotte as " a bright,
clever little girl," said that this was the last time she could
use the word bright with regard to Charlotte, but in this she
was quite mistaken. The children of the parsonage did not
pursue the common path in their search for happiness, but this
does not prove that their young lives were devoid of pleasure.
Charlotte gives us an account of one play, The Islanders.

" June the 31st, 1829.

" The play of +he Islanders was formed in December, 1827,
in the following manner. One night, about the time when the
cold sleet and stormy fogs of November are succeeded by
snow-storms, and high piercing night-winds of confirmed
winter, we were all sitting round the warm blazing kitchen
fire, having just concluded a quarrel with Tabby concerning
the propriety of lighting a candle, from which she came off
victorious, no candle having been produced. A long pause
succeeded, which was at last broken by Bran well saying,
in a lazy manner, 4 1 don't know what to do.' This was
echoed by Emily and Anne.

" Tabby. ' Wha ya may go t'bed.'
" Br unwell. ' I'd rather do anything than that.'
" Charlotte. ' Why are you so glum to-night, Tabby ? Oh !
suppose we had each an island of our own.'

" Branwell. ' If we had I would choose the Island of Man.'
" Charlotte. ' And I would choose the Isle of Wight.'
" Emily. { The Isle of Arran for me.'
" Anne. ' And mine should be Guernsey.'
"We then chose who should be chief men in our islands.
Branwell chose John Bull, Astley Cooper, and Leigh Hunt ;
Emily, Walter Scott, Mr. Lockhart, Johnny Lockhart ; Anne,
Michael Sadler, Lord Bentinck, Sir Henry Halford. I chose the

90 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

Duke of Wellington and two sons, Christopher North and Co.,
and Mr. Abernethy. Here our conversation was interrupted
by the, to us, dismal sound of the clock striking seven, and we
were summoned off to bed. The next day we added many
others to our list of men, till we got almost all the chief men of
the kingdom. After this, for a long time, nothing worth
noticing occurred. In June, 1828, we erected a school on a
fictitious island, which was to contain 1,000 children. The
manner of the building was as follows. The Island was fifty
miles in circumference, and certainly appeared more like the
work of enchantment than anything real," etc.

Charlotte was twelve and Anne eight, yet they all had
to go to bed at seven o'clock, not to sleep is fairly certain ;
they would use their imaginative powers to people their
island.

Shortly after this, Charlotte Bronte gives an account of the
year 1829, including in her statement the newspapers and
magazines either purchased or lent to Mr. Bronte, and the plays
written by his children.

Patrick Bronte had small opportunity of being an indulgent
parent ; he had little money to spare for toys, but the old
interest in warfare and his love for his children prompted him
to buy a box of soldiers from Leeds, which in those days were
more costly than to-day. To ordinary children, these would
have stood for soldiers and nothing more, but to the imagina-
tive Brontes they represented a world of history, and provided
thought and employment for months. Charlotte and Bran well
often took opposite views of history, and it is not surprising
that one should take Wellington and the other Buonaparte as
his or her favourite soldier. In those early days Charlotte
and Branwell were the leaders, whilst Emily and Anne appear
to have been more childish, as was natural, being the younger
members of the family. Wellington became Charlotte's
great hero, and his son's name became her nom de guerre ;
many of her earlier manuscripts are signed " Lord C.
Wellesley," and " The Marquis of Douro."

This make-believe life lasted for six years, and imagination
contributed much to the joy of their uneventful days. Mrs.

MRS. ATKINSON 91

Atkinson, wife of the Rev. Thomas Atkinson, of Hartshead
— Charlotte's godmother — suggested that, as Charlotte was
now nearly fifteen years of age, she ought to go to school, and
she offered to pay the fees to Miss Wooler's school at Roe
Head, Dewsbury, not far from Hartshead.

CHAPTER VIII

DEWSBURY

1831-1832

COWAN BRIDGE had been an unfortunate experiment, but now
that Charlotte was nearly fifteen years of age, and her god-
parents had offered to pay for her education, it was decided
that she should again go to school.

The little author of so many small manuscripts was to
submit to " a new servitude," but as duty was always Charlotte
Bronte's watchword she went bravely on a cold day in January,
by a covered cart, from Haworth to Mirfield Moor, a distance
of about twenty miles.

Mr. Bronte knew the district well, and it is very probable
that he knew Miss Wooler, for her school was not far from his
former home at Hartshead. But if he did not know the
"good, kind schoolmistress," she was known to the Rev.
Thomas Atkinson, who was then Vicar of Hartshead.

Roe Head is still standing — a large, commodious house,
on the Leeds and Huddersfield Road, about five miles from
Huddersfield. The building is of Georgian date, and has the
old-fashioned half-circular bow windows, with the comfortable
window seats. It had the reputation of being haunted in
Charlotte Bronte's days, but Miss Wooler very soon dispelled
that idea. The present owners say no ghost ever haunts it
now, unless it be the spirit of Charlotte Bronte, which Bronte
lovers, especially Americans, come to hunt. It was offered
for sale in 1911, but no reasonable bid was made, and it was
withdrawn. When visiting it some years ago, the writer was
asked by the owner why one of the Bronte' worshippers did not
purchase it, seeing that they were so fond of visiting the former
homes of Charlotte Bronte, and enjoyed exploring the district,

ROE HEAD SCHOOL 93

which has become to be known as Th$ Shirley Country, because
of its association with the novel. To visit a literary shrine
and to live in it are very different. Were it not for the smoky
surroundings, caused by the neighbouring woollen mills, Roe
Head would be a pleasant residence still. The house is large
and roomy, and stands on the slope of Mirfield Moor, com-
manding a view of the Calder Valley. Near the front entrance
is the old tree, under which Charlotte Bronte used to stand or
sit, whilst her schoolmates were at play ; she considered this
a much pleasanter way of spending the time appointed for
recreation, interested in the shadows, and the bits of sky
seen through the branches. There is a carriage drive to the
house, which is surrounded by extensive grounds. The former
schoolroom in which Ellen Nussey found Charlotte Bronte
crying on her first arrival at the school is pointed out to visitors
who are fortunate in gaining admission, and her favourite
window seat is to be seen.

There is ample bedroom accommodation, and when Charlotte
Bronte entered the school there were but seven to ten pupils,
so that Miss Wooler and her sister were able to give much
individual attention to the girls.

Although not more than twenty miles from the moorland
village of Haworth, it was much less solitary, and a far more
picturesque neighbourhood, and the change was a great benefit
to the future novelist.

Near to the school is the beautiful park of Kirklees — the
Nunnwood of Shirley — and Sir George Armytage's Jacobean
hall ; in the grounds is the reputed tomb of Robin Hood, sur-
rounded by a high iron fence. In another part of the park
is the grave of the man who is supposed to have caused
Robin Hood's death. In a hollow, on the borders of the
park, are the remains of the nunnery, and there is still the
old gate-house containing some reputed relics of Robin Hood.

It was formerly supposed, on the suggestion of Ellen Nussey,
that Kirklees was the original of Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre,
but recent research has proved that Wycoller Dean, near
Haworth, is the spot where Jane Eyre found Rochester, and
where she was married to her blind master. It is interesting

94 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

to remember that it was Charlotte Bronte herself who was
afraid she was going blind about the time she wrote Jane Eyre,
according to a letter which she wrote to M. Heger.

The time spent at Roe Head proved very helpful to Charlotte
Bronte in many ways, for she was always alert, and, in addition
to the improvement in her general education, the place and
people served her well when she wrote Shirley.

Describing Kirklees Park, Charlotte Bronte says : "It
is like an encampment of forest sons of Anak. The trees
are huge and old. When you stand at their roots, the
summits seem in another region ; the trunks remain still and
firm as pillars, while the boughs sway to every breeze. In
the deepest calm their leaves are never quite hushed, and in
high wind a flood rushes — a sea thunders above you."

This beautiful country was as welcome to the future author
of Shirley, as was her friendship with what proved to be her
two dearest friends from this neighbourhood — Ellen Nussey
and Mary Taylor. The place was also dear to her from the
associations with her good and kind schoolmistress, Miss
Wooler.

Both Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor have left a faithful
record of Charlotte Bronte's school days at Roe Head. Ellen
Nussey always affirmed that she was the original of Caroline
Helstone in Shirley ', but by comparing that character with
what is known of Charlotte Bronte's life there is much more
of Charlotte Bronte than of Ellen Nussey in the character.
Mary Taylor was the Rose Yorke of the novel, and the
portraiture is very correct. " What a lump of perfection
you have made me," wrote Mary Taylor to the author of
Shirley. The merry, laughing Martha Taylor became the
Jessy Yorke of the story, and Mrs. Pry or was drawn from the
character of Miss Wooler.

" Mrs. Pryor, you know, was my governess, and is still my
friend ; and of all the high and rigid Tories, she is queen ; of
all the staunch Churchwomen, she is chief."

Charlotte found a good friend, whilst at Roe Head, in her
godmother, Mrs. Atkinson, who sometimes took her little

CHARLOTTE BRONTE IN 1831 95

godchild to her home for week-ends. In after years, Mrs.
Atkinson, who had supplied her with clothes, as well as paid
her school fees and given a kindly oversight to her whilst at
Roe Head, ceased to correspond or have anything to do with
her, because she did not approve of a clergyman's daughter
writing novels, especially novels such as Jane Eyre and Shirley ;
where the clergy of the district were so freely criticised.
Mrs. GaskelPs description of Charlotte is interesting —
" In 1831, she was a quiet, thoughtful girl, of nearly fifteen
years of age, very small in figure — ' stunted ' was the word
she applied to herself — but, as her limbs and head were in just
proportion to the slight, fragile body, no word in ever so slight
a degree suggestive of deformity could properly be applied to
her ; with soft, thick, brown hair, and peculiar eyes, of which
I find it difficult to give a description, as they appeared to me
in her later life. They were large, and well shaped ; their
colour a reddish brown ; but if the iris was closely examined,
it appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints. The
usual expression was of quiet, listening intelligence ; but
now and then, on some just occasion for vivid interest or whole-
some indignation, a light would shine out, as if some spiritual
lamp had been kindled, which glowed behind those expressive
orbs. I never saw the like in any other human creature. As
for the rest of her features, they were plain, large, and ill set ;
but, unless you began to catalogue them, you were hardly
aware of the fact, for the eyes and power of the countenance
overbalanced every physical defect ; the crooked mouth and
the large nose were forgotten, and the whole face arrested the
attention, and presently attracted all those whom she herself
would have cared to attract. Her hands and feet were the
smallest I ever saw ; when one of the former was placed in
mine, it was like the soft touch of a bird in the middle of my
palm. The delicate long fingers had a peculiar fineness of
sensation, which was one reason why all her handiwork, of
whatever kind — writing, sewing, knitting — was so clear in its
minuteness. She was remarkably neat in her whole personal
attire ; but she was dainty as to the fit of her shoes and gloves."
The three people who supplied Mrs. Gaskell with particulars

96 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTfiS

of Charlotte BrontS's life at this time were her schoolmistress,
Ellen Nussey, and Mary Taylor. The latter wrote from New
Zealand, nearly twenty-five years after she was at school at
Roe Head, and her account throws much light on this period
of Charlotte Bronte's life.

" I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old-
fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. She
was coming to school at Miss Wooler's. When she appeared
in the schoolroom, her dress was changed, but just as old. She
looked a little old woman, so short-sighted that she always
appeared to be seeking something, and moving her head from
side to side to catch a sight of it. She was very shy and
nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent. When a book
was given her, she dropped her head over it till her nose
nearly touched it, and when she was told to hold her head up,
up went the book after it, still close to her nose, so that it was
not possible to help laughing. . . . We thought her very
ignorant, for she had never learnt grammar at all, and very
little geography.

" She used to draw much better, and more quickly, than any-
thing we had seen before, and knew much about celebrated
pictures and painters. Whenever an opportunity offered of
examining a picture or cut of any kind, she went over it
piecemeal, with her eyes close to the paper, looking so long
that we used to ask her * what she saw in it.' She could
always see plenty, and explained it very well. She made
poetry and drawing, at least, exceedingly interesting to me ;
and then I got the habit, which I have yet, of referring
mentally to her opinion on all matters of that kind, along
with many more, resolving to describe such and such things
to her, until I start at the recollection that I never shall." . .

" The whole family used to * make out ' histories, and
invent characters and events. I told her sometimes they were
like growing potatoes in a cellar. She said, sadly, * Yes !
I know we are ! '

It is interesting to read Charlotte Bronte's description of
Mary Taylor in Shirley.

ELLEN NUSSEY AND CHARLOTTE BRONTE 97

Miss Wooler once said to Mary Taylor that when she first
saw her, she thought her too pretty to live ; but her portrait
in later years did not support this. A greater friend than
Mary Taylor was Ellen Nussey, who gave Mrs. Gaskell all the
information she could. She, herself, did not publish a descrip-
tion of Charlotte Bronte until 1871, when in Scribner's Magazine
she wrote —

" Miss Wooler's system of education required that a good
deal of her pupils' work should be done in classes, and to effect
this, new pupils had generally a season of solitary study ; but
Charlotte's fervent application made this period a very short
one for her — she was quickly up to the needful standard, and
ready for the daily routine and arrangement of studies, and as
quickly did she outstrip her companions, rising from the bottom
of the classes to the top, a position which, when she had once
gained, she never had to regain. She was first in everything but
play, yet never was a word heard of envy or jealousy from her
companions ; everyone felt she had won her laurels by an
amount of diligence and hard labour of which they were
incapable. She never exulted in her successes or seemed
conscious of them ; her mind was so wholly set on attaining
knowledge that she apparently forgot all else.

" Charlotte's appearance did not strike me at first as it did
others. I saw her grief, not herself particularly, till after-
wards. She never seemed to me the unattractive little person
others designated her, but certainly she was at this time
anything but pretty ; even her good points were lost. Her
naturally beautiful hair of soft silky brown being then dry
and frizzy-looking, screwed up in tight little curls, showing
features that were all the plainer from her exceeding thinness
and want of complexion, she looked ' dried in.' A dark,
rusty green stuff dress of old-fashioned make detracted still
more from her appearance ; but let her wear what she might
or do what she would, she had ever the demeanour of a born
gentlewoman ; vulgarity was an element that never won the
slightest affinity with her nature. Some of the elder girls
who had been years at school, thought her ignorant. This was
true in one sense ; ignorant she was indeed in the elementary

7— (2200)

98 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

education which was given in schools, but she far surpassed
her most advanced school-fellows in knowledge of what was
passing in the world at large, and in the literature of her
country. She knew thousands of things unknown to them.

" About a month after the assembling of the school, one of
the pupils had an illness. There was great competition among
the girls for permission to sit with the invalid. Charlotte was
never of the number, though she was as assiduous in kindness
and attention as the rest in spare moments : but to sit with the
patient was indulgence and leisure, and these she would not
permit herself.

" It was shortly after this illness that Charlotte caused such
a panic of terror by her thrilling relations of the wanderings
of a somnambulist. She brought together all the horrors her
imagination could create, from surging seas, raging breakers,
towering castle walls, high precipices, invisible chasms and
dangers.

" Having wrought these materials to the highest pitch of
effect, she brought out, in almost cloud-height, her somnam-
bulist, walking on shaking turrets — all told in a voice that
conveyed more than words alone can express. A shivering
terror seized the recovered invalid ; a pause ensued ; then a
subdued cry of pain came from Charlotte herself, with a
terrified command to others to call for help. She was in
bitter distress. Something like remorse seemed to linger in
her mind after this incident ; for weeks there was no prevailing
on her to resume her tales, and she never again created terrors
for her listeners. Tales, however, were made again in time,
till Miss W. discovered there was 'late talking.' That was
forbidden ; but understanding it was ' late talk ' only which
was prohibited, we talked and listened to tales again, not
expecting to hear Miss Wooler say one morning, ' All the
ladies who talked last night must pay fines. I am sure Miss
Bronte and Miss Nussey were not of the number.' Miss
Bronte and Miss Nussey were, however, transgressors like the
rest, and rather enjoyed the fact of having to pay like them,
till they saw Miss Wooler's grieved and disappointed look.
It was then a distress that they had failed where they were

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AS A SCHOLAR 99

reckoned uon tho unintentionally. This was the

to
here she was mortified and hurt.

and

100 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

She evidently was longing for some never-to-be-forgotten
incident. Nothing, however, arose from her little enterprise.
She had to leave school as calmly and quietly as she had lived
there."

Although Caroline Helstone, as a character, owes more to
Charlotte Bronte than to Ellen Nussey, yet the novelist has
drawn a beautiful portrait of Ellen Nussey in Shirley, which
those who knew her when young said was true to the life.

The silver medal for good conduct, won by Charlotte Bronte,
may now be seen in the Bronte Museum, stamped with the
word " reward." She also took home three prizes at the end
of her first year, and judging by a letter written in French, soon
after she went home in the following year, she had acquired a
fair knowledge of that language.

Evidently her father thought she might be useful in teaching
the younger members of the family, and when she was about
seventeen she returned once more to Haworth, in order to
teach a class of three pupils — 4ier two sisters and her
brother.

The first sojourn at Roe Head was a very happy time, for
if she had to work very hard — harder than her teacher wished —
she had many little pleasures, not the least being her visits
to her godmother, and better still, to the homes of Mary Taylor
and Ellen Nussey.

A youth, who used to have the honour of driving Charlotte
Bronte to and from these homes, was asked which home he
thought she preferred ; he mentioned Ellen Nussey 's, at The
Rydings, Birstall, where he noticed the evidences of much
regret when taking leave, though she always seemed sorry
to leave the Red House at Gomersal, which is pictured in
Shirley as " Briarmains," whilst The Rydings figures as
"Thornfield."

CHAPTER IX

HAWORTH, ROE HEAD AND DEWSBURY MOOR

1832-1838

CHARLOTTE BRONTE returns to Haworth — Her anxiety for the future —
She continues her studies — Tuition in painting — Lines to Bewick
— Charlotte Bronte and Wordsworth — Her correspondence
with Ellen Nussey — The Rydings, Birstall — Ellen Nussey's visit
to Haworth — Branwell Bronte's visit to London — His life at
Haworth — Charlotte Bronte's return to Roe Head accompanied
by Emily Bronte — Uncongenial tasks — Emily Bronte returns to
Haworth — Anne Bronte takes Emily's place as a pupil at Roe
Head — Anne's illness — Transfer of Miss Wooler's school from Roe
Head to Heald House, Dewsbury Moor — Charlotte and Anne
Bronte's return to Haworth — Charlotte Bronte's correspondence
with Sou they.

AFTER a year and a half at Roe Head, Charlotte Bronte left
the school at the close of the Midsummer term. She returned
to Haworth quite happily, for to be with her sisters always
afforded her great pleasure. Mrs. Gaskell seems to have
been struck by her lack of hopefulness, and she judged
her by her letters at this time. Charlotte was the
eldest, and, knowing that her father was often in ill-health,
she dreaded the family being left to struggle with poverty.
The income of the aunt was not large, and there were no
relatives who could help them in any way. This seems to
have made Charlotte over-anxious about the future, and to
this fear must be attributed her determination to qualify
herself to earn her own living. She worked very hard at her
studies, and was never happy except when improving her
qualifications. In connection with this period she writes —
" An account of one day is an account of all. In the
morning, from nine o clock till half -past twelve, I instruct
my sisters, and draw ; then we walk till dinner-time. After
dinner I sew till tea-time, and after tea I either write, read, or
do a little fancy work, or draw, as I please. Thus, in one
delightful though somewhat monotonous course, my life is
passed. I have been only out twice to tea since I came home.

101

102 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

We are expecting company this afternoon, and on Tuesday
next we shall have all the female teachers of the Sunday School
to tea."

This letter shows that Charlotte was busy and happy, and,
to add to her pleasure, her father paid a drawing-master to
come to the parsonage and give her and Bran well lessons in
drawing and painting. Bran well was to be a great artist
some day, and his father intended that he should finish his
studies by attending at the Royal Academy. Both Charlotte
and Branwell completed a large number of little drawings,
mostly copies ; some, however, like their stories, were purely
imaginative. Both the father and aunt thought that these
sketches were wonderful, and so did Mr. Wood, the village
carpenter, who lived a little distance down the steep Main
street of Haworth. In later years, he never tired of telling
how the Vicar's children were in the habit of coming to his
workshop to obtain frames for their drawings ; they were too
proud to accept them as presents, and they were accustomed
to give him a drawing in exchange for a frame, which he usually
made from the odds and ends of his larger picture frames.
He regarded their work as of little value, but afterwards, when
the Bronte girls became famous, he regretted that he had not
kept all these little sketches, some of which were in colour.
His sons remember seeing quite a large collection of these
drawings in one of the drawers, but they have all been des-
troyed or scattered. Mr. Bronte thought so highly of his
children's ability in art, that he determined to provide for them
more efficient training, and a Mr. W. Robinson of Leeds,
was engaged to visit the vicarage for the purpose of giving
lessons to Charlotte and Branwell at two guineas for each visit.

It can never be said that Patrick Bronte was niggardly in
providing for the education of his children, although he had
little to spare out of his small salary.

Charlotte Bronte's weak eyesight prevented her becoming
a successful artist, and Branwell's conceit always stood in
the way of his doing great things. There are several large
canvases to be seen in and around Haworth that were

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND BEWICK 103

executed by Branwell : two are in the possession of the village
carpenter's family. Martha Brown's niece also has an oil
painting of John Brown, the sexton, and in Dewsbury there
are several oil-paintings — the work of Branwell when he lodged
in Fountain Street, Bradford. Mrs. Ingram and Mr. Wood,
the owners of these paintings, spoke most highly of Branwell
Bronte, and were indignant to find him described as a brainless
sot, which is absolutely untrue.

The colour of these family portraits is still good, but they
reveal little more than aptitude for painting, and some small
evidence of talent. Branwell, unlike his sisters, disliked
plodding ; he had not much patience, and, though clever in
many ways, he considered that he could succeed without
effort or diligent application.

Charlotte says that at this time her greatest enjoyments
were drawing and walking on the moors with her sisters. That
she did not neglect her writing is proved by her Lines on the
Celebrated Bewick, dated 27th November, 1832, which have
never been published in Charlotte Bronte's collection of poems.
This poem of twenty verses was first published in Mr. Hall's
little Guide to Haworth. He has kindly allowed it to be
copied —

" LINES ON THE CELEBRATED BEWICK.

The cloud of recent death is past away,
But yet a shadow lingers o'er his tomb

To tell that the pale standard of decay

Is reared triumphant o'er life's sullied bloom.

But now the eye undimmed by tears may gaze
On the fair lines his gifted pencil drew,

The tongue unfalt'ring speaks its meed of praise
When we behold those scenes to nature true —

True to the common Nature that we see

In England's sunny fields, her hills, and vales,

On the wild bosom of her storm-dark sea
Still heaving to the wind that o'er it wails.

How many winged inhabitants of air,

How many plume-clad floaters of the deep,

The mighty artist drew in forms as fair

As those that now the skies and waters sweep !

104 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

From the great eagle with his lightning eye,
His tyrant glance, his talons dyed in blood,

To the sweet breather-forth of melody,
The gentle merry minstrel of the wood.

Each in his attitude of Native grace
Looks on the gazer life-like, free and bold,

And if the rocks be his abiding place

Far off appears the winged marauder's hold.

But if the little builder rears his nest

In the still shadow of green tranquil trees,

And singing sweetly mid the silence blest
Sits a meet emblem of untroubled peace,

' A change comes o'er the spirit of our dream,' —
Woods wave around in crested majesty,

We almost feel the joyous sunshine's beam
And hear the breath of the sweet south go by.

Our childhood's days return again in thought,
We wander in a land of love and light,

And mingled memories joy — and sorrow — fraught
Gush on our hearts with overwhelming might.

Sweet flowers seem gleaming mid the tangled grass,
Sparkling with spray-drops from the rushing rill,

And as these fleeting visions fade and pass

Perchance some pensive tears our eyes may fill.

These soon are wiped away ; again we turn
With fresh delight to the enchanted page,

Where pictured thoughts that breathe and speak and burn
Still please alike our youth and riper age.

There rises some lone rock, all wet with surge
And dashing billows glimmering in the light

Of a wan moon, whose silent rays emerge

From clouds that veil their lustre cold and bright.

And there 'mongst reeds upon a river's side
A wild-bird sits, and brooding o'er her nest

Still guards the priceless gems, her joy and pride,
Now ripening 'neath her hope-enlivened breast.

EARLY POEM BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE 105

We turn the page ; before the expectant eye
A Traveller stands lone on some desert heath,

The glorious sun is passing from the sky
While fall his farewell rays on all beneath.

O'er the far hills a purple veil seems flung,
Dim herald of the coming shades of night ;

E'en now Diana's lamp aloft is hung
Drinking full radiance from the fount of light.

O, when the solemn wind of midnight sighs,
Where will the lonely traveller lay his head ?

Beneath the tester of the star-bright skies
On the wild moor he'll find a dreary bed.

Now we behold a marble Naiad placed

Beside a fountain on her sculptured throne,

Her bending form with simplest beauty graced,
Her white robes gathered in a snowy zone.

She from a polished vase pours forth a stream
Of sparkling water to the waves below,

Which roll in light and music, while the gleam
Of sunshine flings through shade a golden glow.

A hundred fairer scenes these leaves reveal, —

But there are tongues that injure while they praise ;

I cannot speak the rapture that I feel
When on the work of such a mind I gaze.

Then farewell, Bewick, genius' favoured son,
Death's sleep is on thee, all thy woes are past,

From earth departed, life and labour done,
Eternal peace and rest are thine at last.

(Signed) C. BRONTE."
November 27th, 1832.

This poem was written in the November of the year in which
Charlotte Bronte returned home from Roe Head, when sixteen
and a half years of age, and it is significant that in the beginning
of the first chapter of Jane Eyre she speaks of "A drear

106 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

November afternoon, when she was carefully studying the
beautiful engravings in Bewick's History of British Birds."

Of Bewick's two books, Volume I, dealing with the history
of quadrupeds, was published in 1790, and Volume II, which
dealt with the history of British birds, was issued in 1797.
Bewick died in 1828, four years before Charlotte Bronte wrote
her poem.

Bewick's British Birds was included in Patrick Bronte's
collection of books, for the late Mr. Law, of Littleboro, pur-
chased a copy of Bewick's Birds at the Bronte sale in 1886.
The minute engravings must have attracted Charlotte Bronte
especially, for she was very fond of copying pictures.

Bewick was the first engraver on wood in England and, like
the Brontes, he was passionately fond of wild birds and
animals. With his great love of nature and his power to
depict it, he fostered the similar taste in Charlotte Bronte
and her sisters, who revelled in the moors, the changing skies,
and the wild birds on the moor.

In Wuthering Heights Emily tells of Cathy, in her delirium,
picking out the feathers from the pillow and naming them
one by one.

In his History of British Birds, Bewick has drawn some
exquisite little vignettes of the feathers of different birds,
with clear, delicate lines as fine as a hair, and the Brontes
not only knew the name of each bird on the Haworth moors,
but they could tell the bird from seeing a single feather. Just
as there is a Bronte Museum at Haworth, with specimens of
the drawings and writings of the Brontes, so at Newcastle-on-
Tyne there is a Bewick Museum, containing some original draw-
ings and paintings by Bewick. Here are to be seen his early
studies and suggestions ; nothing was too insignificant for
his pencil. In the Bewick Museum may be seen the little
picture, with its suggestive moral, of a traveller trying to hoist
his heavy sack upon his back before starting once more upon
his tramp, whilst a little demon, with horns and tail — the usual
method in those days of depicting the devil for children — is
mischievously pinning the load securely down. Charlotte
Bronte refers to this picture in Jane Eyre.

BEWICK'S HISTORY OF BIRDS 107

When Ellen Nussey asked Charlotte Bronte, at the age of
eighteen, what she should read, she suggested for natural
history Bewick and Audubon.

Charlotte Bronte was at this time a great admirer of Words-
worth, and she may have been prompted to write a eulogy
on the great engraver by Wordsworth's lines in his Lyrical
Ballads—

" O now that the genius of Bewick were mine,
And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne."

There is one little vignette on page 256 of Bewick's History
of Birds that Charlotte Bronte refers to in Jane Eyre. " I
cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quiet churchyard,
with its inscribed headstone, its gate, its two trees, its low
horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent,
attesting the hour of evening." Though she goes into all
these minute details, she does not mention the peculiar
inscription on the tombstone, which reads —

" GOOD TIMES
AND BAD TIMES
AND ALL TIMES
GET OVER."

This may have comforted Charlotte Bronte as it did Jane
Eyre, as she sat hiding in the window-seat, reading and
analysing Bewick.

Her poem on Bewick, written in 1832, helps to prove that
the early part of Jane Eyre was autobiographical, and that
aunt Branwell was the original of " Mrs. Reed," though it is
not all true to fact. Charlotte Bronte paraphrased as well as
quoted some of Bewick's writing in her opening chapter of
Jane Eyre, and her quotation from the poet Thomson is also
from a page of Bewick.

It was in those years, after Charlotte Bronte's visit to Roe
Head, that her voluminous correspondence with Ellen Nussey
began. The girls had vowed eternal friendship in school girl
fashion, and had promised to write to each other once a month.
Charlotte, with the idea of improving herself, suggested that
they should correspond in French.

108 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

After leaving Roe Head, Charlotte was frequently invited
to Ellen Nussey's home at the Rydings, Birstall. The building
is still there, but it has been divided into two houses. When
I was privileged to go through the building, Charlotte's bed-
room was pointed out, and in the grounds is the sunk fence in
which the lightning-struck tree mentioned in Jane Eyre was
to be seen some few years ago, held together by iron hoops.
The house originally belonged to Mr. John Green, a wealthy
Yorkshireman, who owned several ancient halls in Yorkshire.

A descendant of this Mr. John Green, Mr. J. J. Green of
Hastings, married a daughter of Emily Wheelwright, who was
at school with Charlotte and Emily Bronte in Brussels, and
received music lessons from Emily Bronte. The Rydings
figures in Jane Eyre as " Thornfield," though the interior
of Norton Conyers, near Harrogate, contributes something
to it.

Ellen Nussey was one of a family of eleven, who were all
present at her twenty-first birthday party on 22nd April,
1837. She outlived them all and died on 26th November,
1897, aged eighty. The day of her funeral was very wet and
wild, but the Birstall churchyard was crowded, people coming
from long distances, not only out of respect for Miss Nussey,
but because she had been the faithful friend of Charlotte
Bronte. The grave-stone was so crowded that Ellen's name
lias had to be engraved on the side of the stone.

In 1871 she wrote for Scribncr's Magazine an account of
her first visit to Haworth —

" My first visit to Haworth was full of novelty and freshness.
The scenery for some miles before we reached Haworth was
wild and uncultivated, with hardly any population ; at last
we came to what seemed a terrific hill, such a deep declivity
no one thought of riding down it ; the horse had to be carefully
led. We no sooner reached the foot of this hill than we had
to begin to mount again, over a narrow, rough, stone-paved
road ; the horse's feet seemed to catch at the boulders as if
climbing. When we reached the top of the village there was
apparently no outlet, but we were directed to drive into an
entry which just admitted the gig ; we wound round in this

ELLEN NUSSEY'S VISIT TO HAWORTH 109

entry and then saw the church close at hand, and we entered
on the short lane which led to the parsonage gateway. Here
Charlotte was waiting, having caught the sound of the approach-
ing gig. When greetings and introductions were over, Miss
Branwell (the aunt of the Brontes) took possession of their
guest and treated her with the care and solicitude due to a
weary traveller. Mr. Bronte, also, was stirred out of his usual
retirement by his own kind consideration, for not only the
guest but the man-servant and the horse were to be made
comfortable. He made inquiries about the man, of his
length of service, etc., with the kind purpose of making a few
moments of conversation agreeable to him.

" Even at this time, Mr. Bronte struck me as looking very
venerable, with his snow-white hair and powdered coat-collar.
His manner and mode of speech always had the tone of high-
bred courtesy. He was considered somewhat of an invalid,
and always lived in the most abstemious and simple manner.
His white cravat was not then so remarkable as it grew to be
afterwards. He was in the habit of covering this cravat
himself. We never saw the operation, but we always had to
wind for him the white sewing-silk which he used. Charlotte
said it was her father's one extravagance — he cut up yards
and yards of white lute-striag (silk) in covering his cravat ;
and, like Dr. Joseph Woolffe (the renowned and learned
traveller), who, when on a visit and in a long fit of absence,
4 went into a clean shirt every day for a week, without taking
one off,' till at length nearly half his head was enveloped in
cravat. His liability to bronchial attacks, no doubt, attached
him to this increasing growth of cravat.

" Miss Branwell, their aunt, was a small, antiquated little
lady. She wore caps large enough for half a dozen of the
present fashion, and a front of light auburn curls over her
forehead. She always dressed in silk. She had a horror of
the climate so far north, and of the stone floors of the parsonage.
She amused us by clicking about in pattens whenever she had
to go into the kitchen or look after household operations.

" She talked a great deal of her younger days ; the gaieties
of her native town, Penzance, in Cornwall ; the soft warm

110 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

climate, etc. The social life of her younger days she used to
recall with regret ; she gave one the idea that she had been
a belle among her own home acquaintances. She took snuff
out of a very pretty gold snuff-box, which she sometimes
presented to you with a little laugh, as if she enjoyed the slight
shock and astonishment visible in your countenance. In
summer she spent part of the afternoon in reading aloud to
Mr. Bronte. In the winter evenings she must have enjoyed
this ; for she and Mr. Bronte had often to finish their discus-
sions on what she had read when we all met for tea. She would
be very lively and intelligent, and tilt arguments against Mr.
Bronte without fear.

" ' Tabby,' the faithful, trustworthy old servant, was very
quaint in appearance — very active, and, in these days, the
general servant and factotum. We were all 'childer' and
4 bairns,* in her estimation. She still kept to her duty of
walking oat with the ' childer ' if they went any distance fiom
home, unless Bran well were sent by his father as a protector.
Poor ' Tabby ' in later days, after she had been attacked with
paralysis, would most anxiously look out for such duties as
she was still capable of. The postman was her special point
of attention. She did not approve of the inspection which
the younger eyes of her fellow-servant bestowed on his deli-
veries. She jealously seized them when she could, and carried
them off with hobbling step and shaking head and hand to the
safe custody of Charlotte.

" Emily Bronte" had by this time acquired a lithesome, grace-
ful figure. She was the tallest person in the house, except her
father. Her hair, which was naturally as beautiful as Char-
lotte's, was in the same unbecoming tight curl and frizz, and
there was the same want of complexion. She had very
beautiful eyes — kind, kindling, liquid eyes ; but she did not
often look at you ; she was too reserved. Their colour might
be said to be dark grey, at other times dark blue, they varied
so. She talked very little. She and Anne were like twins —
inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy,
which never had any interruption.

" Anne — dear, gentle Anne — was quite different in appearance

RAMBLES ON THE MOORS 111

from the others. She was her aunt's favourite. Her hair
was a very pretty light brown, and fell on her neck in graceful
curls. She had lovely violet-blue eyes, fine pencilled eye-
brows, and clear, almost transparent complexion. She still
pursued her studies, and especially her sewing, under the
surveillance of her aunt. Emily had now begun to have the
disposal of her own time.

" In fine and suitable weather delightful rambles were made
over the moors and down into glens and ravines that here and
there broke the monotony of the moorland. The rugged
bank and rippling brook were treasures of delight. Emily,
Anne, and Branwell used to ford the streams, and sometimes
placed stepping-stones for the other two ; there was always
a lingering delight in these sports — every moss, every flower,
every tint and form, were noted and enjoyed. Emily espe-
cially had gleesome delight in these nooks of beauty — her
reserve for the time vanished. One long ramble made in these
early days was far away over the moors, to a spot familiar
to Emily and Anne, which they called 4 The Meeting of the
Waters.' It was a small oasis of emerald green turf, broken
here and there by small clear springs ; a few large stones
served as resting-places ; seated here, we were hidden from all
the world, nothing appearing in view but miles and miles of
heather, a glorious blue sky, and brightening sun. A fresh
breeze wafted on us its exhilaiating influence ; we laughed and
made mirth of each other, and settled we would call ourselves
the quartette. Emily, half reclining on a slab of stone, played
like a young child with the tadpoles in the water, making
them swim about, and then fell to moralising on the strong
and the weak, the brave and the cowardly, as she chased them
with her hand. No serious care or sorrow had so far cast its
gloom on nature's youth and buoyancy, and nature's simplest
offerings were fountains of pleasure and enjoyment.

" The interior of the now far-famed parsonage lacked
drapery of all kinds. Mr. Bronte's horror of fire forbade cur-
tains to the windows ; they never had these accessories to
comfort and appearance till long after Charlotte was the only
inmate of the family sitting-room — she then ventured on the

112 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

innovation when her friend was with her ; it did not please
her father, but it was not forbidden. There was not much
carpet anywhere except in the sitting-room, and on the study
floor. The hall floor and stairs were done with sand-stone,
always beautifully clean, as everything was about the house ;
the walls were not papered, but stained in a pretty dove-
coloured tint ; hair-seated chairs and mahogany tables, book-
shelves in the study, but not many of these elsewhere. Scant
and bare indeed, many will say, yet it was not a scantness
that made itself felt. Mind and thought, I had almost said
elegance, but certainly refinement, diffused themselves over
all, and made nothing really wanting.

" A little later on there was tne addition of a piano. Emily,
after some application, played with precision and brilliancy.
Anne played also, but she preferred soft harmonies and vocal
music. She sang a little ; her voice was weak, but very sweet
in tone.

" Mr. Bronte's health caused him to retire early. He assem-
bled his household for family worship at eight o clock ; at nine
he locked and barred the front door, always giving, as he
passed the sitting-room door, a kindly admonition to the
4 children ' not to be late ; half-way up the stairs he stayed his
steps to wind up the clock.

" Every morning was heard the firing of a pistol from
Mr. Bronte's room window ; it was the discharging of the
loading which was made every night. Mr. Bronte's tastes led
him to delight in the perusal of battle-scenes, and in following
the artifice of war ; had he entered on military service instead
of ecclesiastical, he would probably have had a very distin-
guished career. The self-denials and privations of camp-life
would have agreed entirely with his nature, for he was remark-
ably independent of the luxuries and comforts of life. The
only dread he had was of fire, and this dread was so intense
it caused him to prohibit all but silk or woollen dresses for his
daughters ; indeed, for anyone to wear any other kind of fabric
was almost to forfeit his respect.

" During Miss Bran well's reign at the parsonage, the love of
animals had to be kept in due subjection. There was then

LOVE OF ANIMALS 113

but one dog, which was admitted to the parlour at stated
times. Emily and Anne always gave him a portion of their
breakfast, which was, by their own choice, the old north country
diet of oatmeal porridge. Later on, there were three household
pets — the tawny, strong-limbed ' Keeper/ Emily's favourite :
he was so completely under her control, she could quite easily
make him spring and roar like a lion. She taught him this
kind of occasional play without any coercion. * Flossy ' —
long, silky-haired, black and white ' Flossy ' — was Anne's
favourite ; and black ' Tom/ the tabby, was everybody's
favourite. It received such gentle treatment it seemed to
have lost cat's nature, and subsided into luxurious amiability
and contentment. The Brontes' love of dumb creatures made
them very sensitive of the treatment bestowed upon them.
For anyone to offend in this respect was with them an
infallible bad sign, and a blot on the disposition."

A visitor does not always see the true family picture. Whilst
Ellen Nussey was staying at the parsonage, there were no doubt
many signs of what may be regarded as a happy home. As it
was summer time, Miss Bran well came downstairs to her meals,
and the father left his study to dine with his children and tell
tales of his younger days, of Haworth, and of the surrounding
neighbourhood. But this was not the usual routine, and it
was calculated to create a more favourable impression than the
family life warranted. Bran well was beginning to be more
troublesome ; the vanity, which was a prominent feature in
his character, was really his besetting sin. His letters to
Coleridge, Wordsworth and the editor of BlackwoocTs Magazine,
showed an excited brain, and there is no doubt that at times
his mind was unbalanced, as his letters and some of his poems
indicate.

Charlotte Bronte tells of Emily being bitten by a mad dog,
and how her sister cauterised the wound with a red-hot iron.
She does not refer to the fact that Branwell, when a boy, was
bitten by a dog, and in his case the wound was not cauterised.
It was only years afterwards, when he became so difficult to
manage, that the bite by the dog was referred to. Whether
it had anything to do with his lack of control is doubtful ;

8— (2200)

114 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

all the members of the home combined to spoil him, and in
cases where the sisters would have been corrected, he was
allowed to pass unpunished, and his faults were even attributed
to manliness as opposed to being effeminate. Charlotte
speaks of his handsome face, and says that nature had been
kinder to him than to his sisters. That he went to London
is certain, though Mrs. Gaskell did not get to know this ; but
he soon got through all the money his father had allowed
him, giving useless excuses, such as that he had been robbed
by a fellow-traveller. The old Vicar saw that Bran well was
not to be trusted in London, and he was brought back ; he
had none of his sisters' stern application to duty. The
people of Haworth laughed at him, and treated him as one
quite lacking in ordinary common sense, though sociable to
a fault.

The Black Bull at Haworth, which has been considered
by some people to some extent responsible for BranwelPs
downfall, was a very respectable village inn, kept by a suc-
cession of members of the Sugden family, who would not
tolerate conduct likely to jeopardise their good name. When
the landlord was taxed with having sent for Branwell, in order
to entertain the guests, he replied : " I never sent for him at
all ; he came himself, hard enough." He admitted, however,
that sometimes the Vicar or his daughters would call at the
front door to enquire if Branwell was there, upon which occa-
sions Branwell would jump through the kitchen window, or
go through the back door, when the landlord would be able
to give a satisfactory answer.

There must have been some good in him, for his friends, and
even those who were merely acquaintances, had much to say
in his favour. Francis A. Leyland, January Searle (George
Searle Phillips), Francis H. Grundy, and many who knew
him in Haworth pitied rather than blamed him. They con-
sidered that he was easily led and unbalanced in character.
No one took him seriously ; people laughed at his conceited
ways, and admired his ability and cleverness in doing things
which were beyond them.

Mrs. Gaskell tells of a picture of his three sisters, which he

THE BLACK BULL, HAWORTH

BRANWELL'S PAINTING 115

painted. The original has disappeared, though fortunately
a photograph on glass was taken by a Ha worth photographer.
Mrs. Gaskell says —

" They all thought there could be no doubt about Bran well's
talent for drawing. I have seen an oil painting of his, done
I know not when, but probably about this time. It was a
group of his sisters, life size, three-quarters length ; not much
better than sign-painting, as to manipulation ; but the like-
nesses were, I should think, admirable. I could only judge
of the fidelity with which the other two were depicted, from
the striking resemblance which Charlotte, upholding the great
frame of canvas, and consequently standing right behind it,
bore to her own representation, though it must have been ten
years and more since the portraits were taken. The picture
was divided, almost in the middle, by a great pillar. On the
side of the column which was lighted by the sun, stood Char-
lotte, in the womanly diess of that day of gigot sleeves and
large collars. On the deeply shadowed side was Emily, with
Anne's gentle face resting on her shoulder. Emily's counte-
nance struck me as full of power ; Charlotte's of solicitude ;
Anne's of tenderness. The two younger seemed hardly to have
attained their full growth, though Emily was taller than
Charlotte ; they had cropped hair, and a more girlish dress.
I remember looking on those two sad, earnest, shadowed faces,
and wondering whether I could trace the mysterious expression
which is said to foretell an early death. I had some fond
superstitious hope that the column divided their fates from
hers, who stood apart in the canvas, as in life she survived.
I liked to see that the bright side of the pillar was towards her
— that the light in the picture fell on her : I might more truly
have sought in her presentment — nay, ia her living face — for
the sign of death in her prime. They were good likenesses,
however badly executed. From thence I should guess his
family argued truly that, if Bran well had but the opportunity,
and, alas ! had but the moral qualities, he might turn out a
great painter."

Mr. Nicholls took the original to Ireland with him, but not
liking the portrait of his wife and her sister Anne he cut out

116 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Emily's portrait, which he considered a good likeness, and
gave it to Martha Brown, who was then his servant in Ireland.
Sir William Robertson Nicoll, in the British Weekly of 29th
Oct., 1908, tells of seeing this painting on his first visit to
Haworth, in the possession of Martha Brown, but he could not
then afford to buy it. The Browns afterwards were not
able to say what became of it, nor could they say what Mr.
Nicholls did with the remainder, but they think he destroyed
it. The people in Haworth who knew the Brontes said that
the picture was a very good likeness of the three sisters, and
Emily's was especially true. About the time when Bran well
painted the picture, Charlotte described herself as getting very
fat, which is borne out by the painting.

When it was decided that Branwell should go to the Royal
Academy, Charlotte felt that she ought to do something to
increase the family income. Several appointments were
offered to her, amongst them one from her old schoolmistress,
Miss Wooler, which she was glad to accept. It was decided
that Emily, who had not attended a school since she was at
Cowan Bridge, should go with Charlotte in order to improve
her education.

Charlotte Bronte returned to Roe Head as governess in
July, 1835, and remained there until May, 1838.

Writing to Miss Nussey on 6th July, 1835, Charlotte Bronte
acquaints her with the various plans which have been formed
at the Haworth Vicarage —

" Emily is going to school, Branwell is going to London, and
I am going to be a governess. This last determination I
formed myself, knowing that I should have to take the step
some time ' and better sune as syne,' to use the Scotch proverb ;
and knowing well that papa would have enough to do with
his limited income, should Branwell be placed at the Royal
Academy, and Emily at Roe Head. 'Where am I going to
reside ? ' you will ask. Within four miles of you, at a place
neither of us is unacquainted with, being no other than the
identical Roe Head mentioned above. Yes ! I am going to
teach in the very school where I was myself taught."

Her experience as governess at Roe Head made it quite

ANNE, EMILY AND CHARLOTTE BRONTE

From an oil-painting by Branwell Bronte, circa, 1840

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AS A TEACHER 117

plain that she had very little aptitude for teaching ; she
lacked the primary essential — love for young children, " horrid
children," as she called them.

But neither she nor her sisters were naturally fond of
children. This opinion is quite borne out by Charlotte
Bronte's old pupils, who were not much impressed by her
teaching ability. Those who remembered her thought of her
as a small, prim, and strict teacher, always neat in appearance,
and reserved in manner. Her failure to impress her per-
sonality on her pupils was probably owing to the fact that
she hated teaching. " Teach, teach, teach," she wrote to
Ellen Nussey. Had she loved children, she would have been
delighted to teach them, instead of looking upon teaching
solely as a means of earning a livelihood, though it is not merely
an ignorant governess protesting against teaching, but injured
genius rebelling against uncongenial work.

Miss Taylor says in one of her letters at this time —

" She seemed to have no interest or pleasure beyond the
feeling of duty."

Charlotte Bronte worked hard as a teacher, but it was an
uncongenial task, and she wore herself out. To add to her
anxiety, Emily pined for the moors, trying hard to overcome
her home sickness by extra exertion in school, which Charlotte
brought to the notice of her father, requesting that he should
send for Emily.

Charlotte paid week-end visits to the Red House at Gomersal,
where the Taylors lived, and also to Helen Nussey 's home at
Brookroyd, to which place she had removed. It is not men-
tioned that Emily visited either of these homes, and no one
at Roe Head appears to have recollected much of her except
that she was reserved and did not make friends with any
of them : " She kept herself to herself, and had little to say
to anybody."

Without making any impression on Miss Wooler's little happy
school, Emily Bronte returned home, and so ended her school
days as a pupil until she was a woman of twenty-four, when
she went to Brussels.

After Emily's departure, Charlotte Bronte, though happy

118 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

in the evenings with Miss Wooler, drifted into a state of nervous
depression, and to add to her troubles, Anne, her younger
sister who had come to take Emily's place at the school was
taken ill too ; this was the only school education which Anne
ever received. During Anne's illness Charlotte Bronte* felt
her responsibility very keenly, and even upbraided Miss
Wooler for her supposed indifference to Anne's health. This
was an example of that occasional ill-temper which clung to
Charlotte throughout life, and was caused, most probably,
by her overwrought nerves —

" I have some qualities that make me very miserable, some
feelings that you can have no participation in — that few, very
few, people in the world can at all understand. I don't pride
myself on these peculiarities. I strive to conceal and suppress
them as much as I can ; bat they burst out sometimes, and
then those who see the explosion despise me, and I hate myself
for days afterwards."

These attacks of nervous depression, from which Charlotte
Bronte suffered when exhausted with anxiety, show how readily
her mind would store up a grudge, especially if she had been
thwarted ; this partly accounts for her hot denunciation of
Cowan Bridge School and the Pensionnat Heger. Writing
to Ellen Nussey, she says —

" You have been very kiad to me of late, and nave spared
me all those little sallies of ridicule, which, owing to my miser-
able and wretched touchiness of character, used formerly to
make me wince, as if I had been touched with a hot iron ;
things that nobody else cares for enter into my mind and
rankle there like venom. I know these feelings are absurd, and
therefore I try to hide them, but they only sting the deeper for
concealment."

It was about Christmas time of 1836 that Miss Wooler
transferred her school from the fine, open and breezy Roe
Head, to Heald House, Dewsbury Moor — a much less bracing
situation, which was sure to be less healthy to anyone accus-
tomed, as the Brontes were, to the moors at Ha worth ; Charlotte
very much regretted the change, especially for the sake of her
sister Anne.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND SOUTHEY 119

As a consequence of the sharp quarrel, Miss Wooler wrote
to Mr. Bronte, who, evidently believing in Charlotte's version,
and no doubt remembering the death of Maria and Elizabeth,
sent for both Anne and Charlotte the next day. Miss Wooler
sought to be reconciled to her passionate young governess, and
they became friends again, the consequence being that Charlotte
returned to the school after the holidays. She did not, how-
ever, remain longer than May, 1838, as the doctor advised
her to return to Ha worth owing to an attack of hypochondria.
After a quiet rest, her father invited Mary and Martha Taylor
to spend a few days at the parsonage. He was anxious to
remove the depression from which Charlotte suffered, and the
visit of these two friends acted like a charm.

Charlotte at this time was influenced by a letter from
Southey, to whom she had sent some of her poems ; she
took his reply quite seriously. Teaching was just as dis-
tasteful as writing was congenial to her ; the fact that she
had to follow the uninteresting life of a governess was cal-
culated to bring about periods of depression. It is evident
that this letter to Southey was somewhat flippant, judging
by his reply. She, however, wrote to thank him for the advice
he gave her, which led to a second letter from Southey, which
suggests that he had a better opinion of Charlotte Bronte
after her second letter to him.

Referring to Charlotte's first letter, which has never been
forthcoming, Southey wrote to Caroline Bowles —

" I sent a dose of cooling admonition to the poor girl whose
flighty letter reached me at Buckland. It seems she is the
eldest daughter of a clergyman, has been expensively educated,
and is laudably employed as governess in some private family.
About the same time that she wrote to me her brother wrote
to Wordsworth, who was disgusted with the letter, for it
contained gross flattery and plenty of abuse of other poets,
including me. I think well of the sister from her second letter,
and probably she will think kindly of me as long as she lives."

ROBERT SOUTHEY (1837).1

Mrs. Gaskell has given Charlotte's second letter and also

1 Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles.

120 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Southey's two letters in reply. Charlotte says in her second
letter to Southey : "I trust I shall never more feel ambitious
to see my name in print ; if the wish should rise I'll look at
Southey's letter and suppress it." For some time, literary work
was laid aside, and she tried to give her mind to other duties.
It was during the Christmas holidays of 1837 that Tabby, the
old servant, met with an accident and broke her leg. All the
sisters had to take their share in nursing her and doing her work,
which interfered with their Christmas festivities. Miss
Branwell was very anxious that Tabby should be sent to her
relatives, and she persuaded Mr. Bronte that this would be
the best plan, but the Bronte girls adopted the " hunger strike "
until they were allowed to have their own way. Miss Branwell
and her nieces did not always take the same view, as the
sexton's family, living close by, knew quite well.

Charlotte Bronte remained at Haworth about a year after
leaving Miss Wooler's school at Dewsbury Moor. In The
Professor she introduces an account of the illness of William
Crimsworth, the original of whom was the novelist herself —

" I was temporarily a prey to hypochondria. She had
been my acquaintance, nay, my guest, once before in boyhood ;
I had entertained her at bed and board for a year ; for that
space of time I had her to myself in secret ; she lay with me,
she ate with me, she walked out with me, showing me nooks
in woods, hollows in hills, where we could sit together, and
where she could drop her drear veil over me, and so hide sky
and sun, grass and green tree ; taking me entirely to her
death-cold bosom and holding me with arms of bone. What
tales she would tell me at such hours ! What songs she would
recite in my ears ! How she would discourse to me of her
own country — the grave — and again and again promise to
conduct me there ere long ; and drawing me to the very brink
of a black, sullen river, show me on the other side shores
unequal with mound, monument, and tablet, standing up in
a glimmer more hoary than moonlight. " Necropolis ! ' she
would whisper, pointing to the pale piles, and add, ' It contains
a mansioa prepared for you.' "

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S ILLNESS 121

Writing to Branwell from Brussels, six years later, Charlotte
says —

" It is a curious, metaphysical fact that always in the
evening ... I always recur as fanatically as ever to the old
ideas, the old faces, and the old scenes in the world below."

CHAPTER X

EMILY BRONTE AT LAW HILL, SOUTHOWRAM

1836-1839

EMILY BRONT£ appointed governess at Law Hill School — Lack ol
training for her duties — Her account of school life — Her
Character — The Misses Patchett — Law Hill School and neighbour-
hood— Poems composed whilst at the school — Material and
inspiration gained by Emily's association with the school.

EMILY seems to have soon revived after reaching home from
Roe Head, and she kept up her studies, partly with her father,
but working more frequently alone, whilst Charlotte and Anne
continued at Roe Head School.

After remaining at home about fifteen months, Emily, now
aged eighteen, obtained an appointment as a governess,
probably urged on like Charlotte, and later like Anne, by the
feeling that she ought to earn something to enable Branwell
to be sent to the Royal Academy. She was successful in
obtaining a situation at the school kept by a Miss Elizabeth
Patchett, at Law Hill, Southowram, some three or four miles
from Halifax. Her experience for this position was somewhat
limited. As a teacher she had received no training whatever,
and it is not surprising, therefore, that she had a hard time
at the beginning of her career at Law Hill, for she was incapable
of submitting to regular routine ; she loved to do things in
her own way, and preferred to choose her own time : " I'll
walk where my own nature would be leading ; it vexes me
to choose another guide," she says in one of her poems.

Charlotte Bronte wrote to Ellen Nussey from Roe Head
School on 2nd October, 1836—

" My sister Emily is gone into a situation as teacher in a large
school of near forty pupils, near Halifax. I have had one letter
from her since her departure ; it gives an appalling account
of her duties — hard labour from six in the morning until near
eleven at night, with only one half -hour of exercise between.
This is slavery. I fear she will never stand it.'"

This is all the actual information which has been handed
down by the Brontes concerning Emily's stay at Law Hill.

122

EMILY BRONTE AT LAW HILL 123

According to Mrs. Gaskell, Charlotte wrote this letter to Ellen
Nussey on 6th Oct., 1836.

In the privately printed volume of Charlotte's letters, which
were compiled by Mr. Horsfall Turner for Ellen Nussey, the
letter is also dated 6th Oct., 1836, and in the first Bronte
Museum exhibition Mr. Horsfall Turner exhibited a letter of
Charlotte's of that date, but in the Life and Letters, by Mr.
Shorter, the letter is dated 2nd April, 1837, and is headed
Dewsbury Moor, but there must be some mistake, for Miss
Wooler was at Roe Head when Charlotte wrote to Ellen Nussey
telling her of Emily having gone to a situation at Law Hill.

Mrs. Gaskell says : " Emily had given up her situation
in the Halifax District School at the expiration of six months
of arduous trial." l This would imply that Emily left Law Hill
in the Spring of 1837. But, in a statement following a letter
dated March, 1839, referring to Henry Nussey's proposal of
marriage to Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell says : " Emily,
who suffered and drooped more than her sisters when away
from home, was the one appointed to remain. Anne was the
first to meet with a situation." Anne accepted this appoint-
ment in April, 1839, according to Charlotte Bronte's letter,
which Mrs. Gaskell quotes. This would show that Emily
Bronte stayed at Law Hill for two and a half years.

Again, Anne Bronte, writing in her journal on 30th July,
1841, says : " Four years ago I was at school . . . Emily
has been a teacher at Miss Patchett's and left it." As the
second little journal was written exactly four years later,
the one for 1841 points to the fact that the four years
mentioned cover July, 1837, to July, 1841, showing that
Emily was at Law Hill later than the Spring of 1837. In
support of this evidence, Mrs. Watkinson of Huddersfield, who
first went as a pupil to Law Hill in Oct., 1838, has kindly
allowed me to see letters of hers written at that time from
Law Hill, and she is absolutely certain that Emily Bronte
was a teacher during the winter, 1838-39 ; she remembers

1 The only authority for this statement appears to be a letter from
Ellen Nussey to Mrs. Gaskell, dated Oct. 22, 1856. (The Brontes : Life
and Letters, by Clement K. Shorter.)

124 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

her quite well, and the one thing that impressed her most
about Emily Bronte was her devotion to the house-dog, which
she once told her little pupils was dearer to her than they were.

It is unfortunate that all Emily's letters to her sisters have
been destroyed by Charlotte Bronte. The letter to Ellen
Nussey complaining of Emily's hardships is but another
chapter in an old story. All the employers of the Brontes
were slave-drivers, according to Charlotte, whereas whatever
fault existed could be attributed largely to the temperament
of the eccentric and reserved daughters of the moor. They had
no aptitude for teaching, for the chains of their genius were
dragging at them all the time.

Mrs. Gaskell has tried to prove that the employers of the
Brontes were all unkind and even cruel. Those who knew
Miss Elizabeth Patchett, of Law Hill School, have spoken
very highly of her, and she was greatly respected and loved by
her pupils. This is fully borne out by letters seen by the writer,
all of which go to prove that she was a kind schoolmistress.
This girls' school was conducted by two sisters, Miss Elizabeth
and Miss Maria Patchett. Miss Maria Patchett was married
before Emily Bronte went to Southowram, and Miss Elizabeth
married the Rev. John Hope, Vicar of Southowram, shortly
after Emily Bronte left in 1839.

From the testimony of several old pupils, Emily Bronte was
not unpopular at Law Hill, though she could not easily associate
with others, and her work was hard because she had not the
faculty of doing it quickly. Unlike Charlotte, she was not
good at needlework, and like her elder sister Maria, though
clever in her own unique way, she was untidy, and fond of
day-dreaming. The school was built away from the farm,
across the yard ; it was a long narrow building, divided into
class-rooms, and the pupils slept in the bedrooms overhead,
and not at the farm.

Miss Elizabeth Patchett, according to one of her pupils
still living, was a very beautiful woman, wearing her hair
in curls. She was fond of teaching, and after her marriage
to Mr. Hope she lived in the Vicarage, and took a great interest
in the old home. Her husband died in 1843, and when

SOUTHOWRAM 125

visiting his grave in the old churchyard she never failed to
call at her old home. Her relatives naturally were not pleased
that Charlotte Bronte's letter to Miss Nussey should have
been published by Mrs. Gaskell. Like Cowan Bridge, Law
Hill School was ever afterwards marked as an institution
which was conducted with lack of consideration, simply
because one of the Brontes was unable to carry out the ordinary
duties assigned to her. The consequence was that the friends
and relatives of the Patchetts refrained from discussing Emily
Bronte for many years. They quite ignored the Bronte connec-
tion with the school, being satisfied that their reputation should
rest with other pupils and teachers who had passed through it.

The quaint village of Southowram, near Halifax, stands at
the top of a very steep and long hill, higher than Haworth,
and the approach to it to-day is by a steep and irregular road,
which affords a hard climb to the pedestrian ; but in
Emily Bronte's time there was no real road, except a rugged
moorland path, leading up Beacon Hill. From the village a
magnificent view of hills on every side can be seen, stretching
as far as Oxenhope Moors on one side and the Kirklees Estate
on the other, whilst the winding Calder valley lies between,
with its river and canal.

Law Hill is a gentleman farmer's house ; it is a square
three-storied building, with a pleasant view looking in the
direction of the little church known as St. Anne's-in-the-Grove.
A still older church, now used as a stable, was known as St.
Anne's-in-the-Brier. From the windows of Law Hill there
are fine views over the Calder valley to the heights around.
On the lawn are large trees, which in summer hide the greater
part of the front of the house. It was whilst at Law Hill
that Emily wrote —

" The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow ;
But a tyrant spell has bound me, <

And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow,

And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

126 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Clouds beyond clouds above me,

Wastes beyond wastes below ;
But nothing dread can move me,

I will not, cannot go/'1

This poem is dated November, 1837, The uncultivated
land around Law Hill was mostly " waste beyond waste " in
1837 ; now it is cultivated. When the writer last visited
Law Hill, it was occupied by two brothers, who lived alone,
no woman having dwelt in the house for years. The front
gate being locked and barred, access was gained through a
wide, open gateway close to the schoolroom, with stone pillars
on either side of the path admitting to the back door. On
knocking at the door the angry barking of dogs greets one,
reminding the visitor of Lockwood's approach to Wuthering
Heights, for this old house at Southowram has been credited
with being the original of Wuthering Heights, and it is certain
that Emily had it in mind when writing her masterpiece, for,
as on Ha worth moors, many weird tales are associated with this
district. She seems to have taken Law Hill as the original
for Wuthering Heights, and placed it on Haworth Moor.

The schoolroom across the farmyard, in which Emily Bronte
dragged out her uncongenial duties, has been considerably
altered, and it is now converted into three small cottages.
The present owner remembers the last visit paid by Mrs. Hope
(Miss Patchett), the former schoolmi stress. She was then a
very old lady, but still beautiful with her grey curls, and, though
over eighty years of age, " could riip about from room to room
quite gaily," as he expressed it. From the description of
Miss Patchett, which has been given by those who knew her,
it is evident that she was of a decided and practical turn of
mind, and a person who knew how to carry out her duties
as a schoolmistress. Her school, in consequence, had an
excellent reputation. In Emily Bronte's time there was a
farm attached to it, which practically supplied most of the
produce that was required by the pupils, teachers and servants.
It is possible that the original of " Joseph " in Wuthering
Heights may have been connected with the farm, and it is

1 Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, by Clement K. Shorter.

MISS PATCHETT 127

probable that Emily Bronte quite unconsciously got material
from this place when writing her famous novel. The road
leading to these heights is known as Beacon Hill Road, and
Law Hill can be seen from a long distance. A tramway now
scales the Beacon Hill, but so steep was it near the top that a
large slice of land was practically cut off to level it when the
new road was made.

The girls at the school were taught all the usual accom-
plishments, and horse-riding in addition : Miss Patchett is
said to have been a very skilful horsewoman. There is an
old stone horsemount in the farmyard, near to the side entrance,
leading to the front lawn. Emily Bronte pictures the elder
Catherine in Wuthering Heights as a fearless rider. The white
painted stoops on the moor between Haworth and Halifax are
mentioned in Wuthering Heights, as are also the horse steps.

Emily Bronte would be sure to notice these upright stones
which are still to be seen, when driving to and from Southowram.
The fields and meadows around Law Hill were part of the farm,
and Emily Bronte must have had them in mind when she
portrayed Joseph looking for Heathcliff in Chapter IX
of Wuthering Heights. There is mention of the moors, the hay-
loft, the gate on the full swing, Miss's pony, and the meadow —
all to be found near Law Hill, for the fields near the farm were
cultivated, and the wastes stretched beyond. The Withens,
by many claimed as the original of Wuthering Heights, on
Haworth Moor, does not answer so well to this description,
and the house seems smaller than Wuthering Heights r,,s
described by Emily Bronte. The tracts of waste land beyond
the parsonage at Haworth and at Southowram have both been
utilised in Wuthering Heights : both are lonely and desolate :
here and there are the old farms, in which the rough and
uncouth people lived, seldom associating with each other or
with other people. When Charlotte said Emily had no
more practical knowledge of the people among whom she lived
than a nun has of those who passed her convent gates, she
forgot that Emily had seen something of the life of the farmer
and his servants during her two and a half years at Law
Hill.

128 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Emily Bronte, like Charlotte when at Roe Head and Dews-
bury Moor, does not appear to have made much impression
on her pupils ; she was simply one of the governesses —
nothing more. She had charge of the younger children, and
they soon forgot the time she spent with them, though there
is no record that she was ever unkind ; on the contrary she was
liked by some of her pupils. The girls were all boarders from
Halifax and other towns in the neighbourhood, and the elevated
position of the school counted in its favour. It was certainly
a healthy spot for strong girls, but the Brontes were far from
strong, and the taint of " consumption " predisposed them to
illness, whilst other girls would be likely to flourish in such
a bracing climate, but as Emily appears to have stayed at
Law Hill from October, 1836, to the Spring of 1839, it seems
as if the place agreed with her.

When Emily Bronte walked around Southowram, she would
often be with the pupils or with Miss Patchett, and not alone
as she would wish. As the Patchetts were a very old Halifax
family, it is possible that Emily Bronte would learn much of
the district from Miss Patchett, who at the time was a handsome
woman of forty-four, just as Charlotte did from Miss Wooler
at Roe Head ; for the daily walks with the Head Mistress were
a much prized recreation, a former pupil told me.

Unlike Cowan Bridge School, the church was not far away,
and Emily Bronte was able to take her walks to the church
and the moors with her pupils without any great inconvenience,
even in bad weather. There was a choice of walks, one leading
down the valley to Brighouse, whilst beyond is Hartshead-
cum-Clifton, and further on is Roe Head and Kirklees. The
long steep road to Halifax and back was nearly eight miles and
obviously too severe a strain for the young scholars, but one of
the pupils, who was at the school when Emily Bronte was there,
allowed me to see a letter in which she mentions that Miss
Patchett took some of the girls to Halifax to see the Museum
occasionally, and the stuffed birds and animals are mentioned
in the letter as being of great interest ; doubtless Emily Bronte
enjoyed the Museum. She never refers to her school days in

POEMS COMPOSED AT LAW HILL 129

her novel, but she mentions her surroundings again and again,
both in her novel and in her poems.

In spite of Emily's hard treatment, of which Charlotte
Bronte complained, she wrote a number of poems during the
period of 1836-1839 whilst at Law Hill, and the poem on
" Home," beginning " A little while, a little while," was
written there, in my opinion —

" A little while, a little while,

The weary task is put away,

And I can sing and I can smile,

Alike, while I have holiday.

Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart —
What thought, what scene invites thee now ?

What spot, or near or far apart,
Has rest for thee, my weary brow?

Still, as I mused, the naked room,

The alien firelight died away ;
And from the midst of cheerless gloom

I passed to bright, unclouded day.

The last verse reads —

Even as I stood with raptured eye,
Absorbed in bliss so deep and dear,

My hour of rest had fleeted by,
And back came labour, bondage, care."

" Even as I stood with raptured eye " seems to point
to the nearness of Emily Bronte's home, which, as the crow
flies, was only a short distance away.

It is not possible to agree with Mrs. Humphry Ward, or Miss
May Sinclair, that the poem was composed at Roe Head, even
though Charlotte Bronte attributes it to that period. Charlotte
says Emily was only sixteen when she wrote the poem ; as a
matter of fact Emily was seventeen on the very day after she
arrived at Miss Wooler's school. Charlotte never seems to have
heard much from Emily about Law Hill. Sir William Robertson
Nicoll and Miss Robinson consider it to have been written when
Emily Bronte was at Brussels, because Miss Robinson saw
a copy of Emily Bronte's poems with dates ; but this poem

9— (2200)

130 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTfiS

may have been kept undated, as many others were ; if it
had been dated Charlotte Bronte would have seen it, and not
guessed that it was written at Roe Head. It is much more
likely to have been written at Law Hill, for at Roe Head there
was little in Miss Wooler's school to lead her to write about
" labour, bondage, care," nor was there at Brussels, as in each
case Emily Bronte was a pupil, and study to her was not
" labour, bondage, care." Her evenings at Roe Head and at
Brussels were spent in her own way, with her studies, whereas at
Law Hill she was said to have been at work until nearly eleven
o'clock at night, possibly mending the pupils' clothing, pre-
paring lessons for the next day, marking exercises, and caring
for things belonging to her pupils. Moreover, it would be in
keeping with Emily's character to compose poems in her
solitude, but whilst at Roe Head and Brussels she had Charlotte's
company in the evenings, and both she and Charlotte Bronte
had gone to Brussels with the determination to acquire a
good knowledge of French and German, and in consequence
there was little time for writing poetry in the evenings. There
is only one poem that can be attributed to Brussels, judging
by the Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, recently published by
Mr. Clement Shorter. Emily was in her nineteenth year when
she went to Law Hill. The " alien firelight " mentioned in the
poem could scarcely refer to Miss Wooler's kindly hearth,
and at Brussels a stove was used, whereas at Law Hill the
firelight might well be considered "alien," as Emily was a
stranger amongst strangers. If the poem is carefully studied,
it is evident that it is the lament of a governess, whose " labour,
bondage, care " have well nigh overwhelmed her, rather than
the moan of a pupil. Moreover, the poem could scarcely have
been written at Roe Head, for Emily Bronte's previous poems
of 1835 are far from being equal to the one commencing " A
little while, a little while." If Emily stayed at Law Hill for
two years and a half, as seems very probable, she may have
composed this poem at any time in the interval between her
eighteenth birthday and within a few months of her twenty-
first birthday. Anne probably wrote her poem on " Home "
when she was about eighteen. This helps to confirm

tHE GONDAL CHRONICLES 131

the assumption that Emily was about twenty when she
wrote hers, for the sisters wrote on similar subjects, as on
" The Gondals " and " The Last Lines." Granted that Emily
was at the school for two years and a half, during that period
she wrote no fewer than thirty-nine poems, according to the
dates given in the recent edition of The Complete Poems of
Emily Bronte, published by Mr. Clement Snorter. Some
of these poems evidently refer to her residence at Law Hill.
In addition to these thirty-nine poems, there are seventeen
which Charlotte published in 1850, which she called Selections
from the Literary Remains of Ellis and Acton Bell. These were
issued with a new edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey,
by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., who took over the publication
from Messrs. Newby, the original publishers. Charlotte
Bronte tells us that the poems were written at twilight in the
schoolroom when Emily was only sixteen. Charlotte Bronte
makes several mistakes in her preface, which seems to imply
that she and Emily were not in each other's confidence.

Referring to Roe Head, Charlotte says of Emily : " She only
had been three months at school, and it was some years before
the experiment of sending her from home was again ventured
on. After the age of twenty, having meantime studied alone
with diligence and perseverance, she went with me to an
establishment on the Continent." This was in 1842.

This preface to the " Selections " does not touch on the
stay of the two and a half years at Southowram, but Charlotte
Bronte clearly implies that the moors were the source of
Emily's inspiration. The district around Roe Head was not
moorland, nor, of course, was it at Brussels. Southowram
evidently helped to furnish Emily with material and inspiration
for her poems and her one great novel.

Several of Emily Bronte's poems prove the existence of
the Gondal Chronicles.

These Gondal Chronicles are first mentioned in a poem
dated 19th August, 1834, when Emily was only sixteen. This
poem was written a year before she went to Roe Head
in July, 1835, and, from Anne's remarks, the Gondals had
given them interest and amusement for many a long day.

132 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

" O Alexander ! when I return,
Warm as these hearths thy heart would burn ;
Light as thine own my step would fall,
If I might hear thy voice in the hall.

But thou art now on the desolate sea, ,
Thinking of Gondal and grieving for me ;
Longing to be in sweet Elbe again,
Thinking and grieving and longing in vain."1

If Emily Bronte left home in October, 1836— the date given
by Charlotte — then the first poem that Emily wrote at Law
Hill suggests the scenery around Southowram —

" All down the mountain-sides wild forests lending
The mighty voice to the life-giving wind ;
Rivers their banks in the jubilee bending,
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wilder and deeper their waters extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind."1

The poem, consisting of four stanzas, is dated December
13, 1836, and suggests the woods on the hill sides, which
slope down to the winding river Calder in the valley below.

There is another poem showing that Emily, like Charlotte,
suffered from insomnia, and, judging by the date, it must
have been written at Law Hill.

The last two verses read —

" Sleep brings no friend to me

To soothe and aid to bear ;
They all gaze on how scornfully,
And I despair.

Sleep brings no wish to fret

My harassed heart beneath ;
My only wish is to forget

In endless sleep of death." l

November, 1837.

There are poems which range in date from December, 1836,
to January, 1839, which covers the time when Emily was at
Law Hill. The poem "To a wreath of snow " written in
December, 1837, which tells of " my prison room," could
scarcely refer to Ha worth.

It was decided by the family in the Spring of 1839, according
1 Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, by Clement K. Shorter.

EMILY BRONTE'S INSPIRATION 133

to Mrs. Gaskell, that Emily should remain at home, whilst
Charlotte went as governess to Stonegappe, Anne to Blake
Hall, and Branwell had a studio in Bradford, where he set
up as a portrait-painter, and worked with Mr. Thompson.

It was in the April of 1839 that Emily wrote The Absent
One, which was probably suggested by Anne's departure
after her Spring holiday. The first stanza runs —

" From our evening fireside now

Merry laugh and cheerful tone,
Smiling eye and cloudless brow,

Mirth and music all are flown.
Yet the grass before the door

Grows as green in April rain,
And as blithely as of yore

Larks have poured their daylight strain." l

These poems have more than a bibliographical interest,
for they prove that Emily Bronte was not altogether the
visionary mystic which some writers have assumed. She had
a kind heart, and her affection for her home and family was
greater than it is supposed to have been. It has been thought
that her poems had no biographical reference either to herself
or her family, but this view is not correct. The poems written
at Law Hill are distinct from the Haworth poems, and
whilst they have some affinity with the Gondal Chronicles
they reveal something of the life of the author of Wuthering
Heights, and they prove that none but Emily Bronte could
have written the tragedy of Wuthering Heights as it stands.
Take, for instance, the poem beginning " Light up thy halls,"
and dated 1st November, 1838, the last lines of which are
characteristic of Emily —

" Unconquered in my soul the Tyrant rules me still :
Life bows to my control, but Love I cannot kill ! "

The poem beginning " The soft unclouded blue of air "
could only have been written by one who was able to create a
Heathcliff some eight years afterwards.

Environment confers nothing ; it can only develop innate
capacity, which Emily showed both in her poetry and in her
novel. One other poem written at this time shows her

1 Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, by C. K. Shorter.

134 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTftS

ambition and the note of despair, that often went hand in hand
all through her life. She had no " worldly wisdom," as
Charlotte said after her death, but her work shows that not
only did she possess genius, but that she had high ideals, which
she ever struggled to attain.

Emily's one wish seems to have been to write her thoughts
in verse. In August, 1837, when at Law Hill she writes—

"I asked myself, O why has Heaven
Denied the precious gift to me,
The glorious gift to many given,
To speak their thoughts in poetry ?

Dreams have encircled me, I said,
From careless childhood's sunny time ;
Visions by ardent fancy fed
Since life was in its morning prime.

But now, when I had hoped to sing,
My fingers strike a tuneless string ;
And still the burden of the strain —
I strive no more ; 'tis all in vain." 1

The complete edition of Emily Bronte's poems has proved
that some of the mysterious Gondal Chronicles lie buried in
the poems. Whether Emily wrote any chronicles in prose will
never be known, but it is clear that " the good many books "
which Emily said she had in hand in July, 1841, must have
been destroyed.

As previously mentioned, the pupils at Law Hill were taught
horse-riding, and it is not at all unlikely that Emily learnt to
ride whilst there, so that the poem, To the horse, Black Eagle,
which I rode at the battle of Zamorna, though imaginative,
suited Emily's fearless nature. Emily may have known the
delights of horse-riding, and her love for animals would be
sure to include horses. Branwell was fond of horse-riding
when he could get the loan of horse, and a saddle-bag is now
to be seen in the Bronte Museum, which was used both by him
and by his father.

The battle of Zamorna was likely enough an incident in the
Gondal Chronicles, and the mention of the word Zamorna
proves that Emily joined in the writing of the imaginary

1 Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, by Clement K. Shorter.

A VOLUME OF BRONT& MANUSCRIPTS 135

chronicles. In the British Museum is a small volume of
manuscripts by Charlotte Bronte, purchased in 1892 from a
Mr. Nys of Brussels. The longest manuscript, consisting of
twenty-six pages, is The Spell : an Extravaganza by Lord
Charles Albert Florian Wellesley and signed Charlotte Bronte,
July 21, 1834. In it she says, " I sign myself your guardian
in peace, your general in war, your tyrant in rebellion,
ZAMORNA," which was Charlotte's nom de guerre in 1834.

The story is dated from the Zamorna Palace (Emily writes
of the Palace of Instruction) and in a postscript, addressed to
the Earl of North Angerland — a nom de guerre used by Bran-
well Bronte — Charlotte writes : " Signed, your lordship's
countryman, Zamorna, September 15th, 1834." Further, there
is a reference to a speech by His Grace, the Duke of Zamorna.

There is also included in the volume in the British Museum
a scrap-book written by Charlotte Bronte, dated March 17th,
1835, and described on the outer cover as "A mingling of
many things compiled by Lord C. A. F. Wellesley " ; this
contains an "Address to the Angrians by His Grace, the
Duke of Zamorna," and it is interesting to know that in May,
1912, a manuscript of some twenty-four pages was sold in
London, entitled The Rising of the Angry <ans, by Bran well
Bronte, dated January, 1836, which shows that Charlotte and
Branwell were writing on similar subjects, indeed judging
from these old MSS. the brother and sister became rivals,
and tilted arguments at each other. In this address to the
" Angrians," Charlotte begins : " Men of Angria " : " If you
would only pronounce Arthur Wellesley your chosen leader,
etc.," and she signs herself " Your tyrant in rebellion."

As further proof that all the parsonage children were busy
with these imaginative stories, it is interesting to find Charlotte
addresses a Lady Helen Percy, and Emily in her recently
published poems addresses " Percy " several times, whilst
Branwell wrote in 1835, The Life of Field Marshal the Right
Honourable Alexander Percy, Earl of Northangerland, in two
volumes, by John Bud (P. B. Bronte). In 1837 he is credited
with a story, Percy, by P. B. Bronte, and in The Bronte Family,
by the late Mr. Leyland, is a long poem on "Percy Hall," which

136 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTfiS

Mr. Leyland tells us is signed " North angerland " at the top
and Alexander Percy, Esq., at the bottom. Emily Bronte
seems to be the only one of the family that refused to use a
nom de guerre in the early day. Either she signed her own
name, or left the poem unsigned, so far as is known.

Even Anne uses Lady Geralda, Alexandrina Zenotia,
and Olivia Vernon as pseudonyms.

Miss May Sinclair in her criticism on Emily Bronte's poems
in The Three Brontes says : " You can track the great Gondal
hero down by that one fantastic name Zamorna," which Miss
Sinclair treats as purely impersonal. Seeing that the name
is associated with Charlotte Bronte, it lends interest to the
Gondal Chronicles, showing that these imaginative plays, like
the Bronte novels, had some reference to the Bronte household,
as they used each other as characters in the plays. In the
light of my discovery in the British Museum MS. that Charlotte
wrote as " The Duke of Zamorna " in 1834-35, and that Bran well
was known as " Percy," the following stanza from page 229 of
Mr. Shorter's Complete Poems of Emily Bronte is interesting.

" What ! shall Zamorna go down to the dead.
With blood on his hand that he wept to have shed ?
What ! shall they carve on his tomb with the sword
The Slayer of Percy, the scourge of the Lord ?
Bright flashed the fire in the young Duke's eye
As he spoke in the tones of the trumpet swelling.
Then he stood still and watched earnestly how these tones
were on Percy's spirit telling."1

Charlotte heads one chapter of one of the early manuscripts
addressed to Percy : " He comes, the conquering hero comes."
For many years Bronte enthusiasts have been searching for
the manuscript of the early part of a story sent to Wordsworth
in the summer of 1840 (if Mrs. GaskelPs date is correct), but
as Wordsworth's letter is undated, there is no proof ; and
Mrs. Gaskell has more than once put letters under the wrong
date, and even placed an extract from one letter as being
from a totally different one, though it is possible that the MS.
was sent in 1840, but if it refers to the MS. now in the British
Museum, that is dated 1834 and 1835.

1 Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, by Clement K. Shorter.

CHARLOTTE'S SELECTION OF EMILY'S POEMS 137

Comparing The Spell with Charlotte Bronte's letter to
Wordsworth, we can perceive that it answers to the description,
for there is the character of "Percy" mentioned repeatedly,
and also a " Georgina " and " Eliza," which afterwards appear
in Jane Eyre. The MS. is in very minute hand printing and
needs a powerful magnifying glass to decipher it. It is evidently
the MS. which Mr. Shorter says cannot be traced.

Since Mrs. Gaskell saw the MS. in 1855, it is clear that she
saw it in Brussels. Referring to it Mrs. Gaskell says : " Some
fragments of the manuscript yet remain, but it is in too small
a hand to be read without great fatigue to the eyes ; and one
cares the less to read it, as she herself condemned it, in the
preface to the Professor, by saying that in this story she had
got over such taste as she might once have had for the
4 ornamental and redundant in composition.' "

No fewer than eighty poems in the complete edition of
Emily Bronte's poems contain imaginative names which
possibly refer to the Gondal Chronicles. Had Emily Bronte
lived to know of her success, both as a poet and a novelist,
she might have given to the world her cycle of Gondal
Chronicles, which were probably never completed. Charlotte
possibly destroyed some, which she considered not to be of
sufficient merit to be included in the second collection of poems
published in 1850, though some are now published.

Of the selections made by Charlotte of Emily Bronte's
poems, the best known are The Philosopher, Remembrance,
Hope, Honour's Martyr, The old Stoic, A little while, a little
while, The Visionary and Last Lines, which will always bear
repeating, for they are not to be surpassed in dignity and self-
reliance. Unfortunately these are not all dated. Charlotte
and Anne have had some of their poems set to music, but
most of Emily's are unsuitable for song. The voice of the
soul is tense and suppressed, so much so that in reading them
aloud there is a heart-ache. Emily Bronte was intensely
introspective, and the gift of humour had passed her by. Her
poems grow upon the reader and they gain by re-reading, for
the spirit of the mystic broods over all she wrote and they
provide food rather for the soul than for the intellect.

CHAPTER XI

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S OFFERS OF MARRIAGE
1839

ANNE BRONT£ becomes a governess at Blake Hall, Mirfield — Agnes
Grey and Blake Hall — Charlotte Bronte's first offer of marriage —
Her views on marriage — The Rev. Henry Nussey — a prototype of
St. John Rivers in Jane Eyre — His unfortunate love affairs —
Mr. Nussey's Diary — Charlotte Bronte's refusal of the offer —
Christmas time at the Haworth Vicarage — Charlotte Bronte becomes
a governess at Stonegappe — Mr. John Benson Sidgwick — Gateshead
Hall in Jane Eyre — She complains of her treatment at Stonegappe —
Mrs. Gaskell's Account — Charlotte Bronte* visits Swarcliffe,
Harrogate — Norton Conyers and Thornfield Hall — Her second offer
of marriage — First visit to the sea — Easton and Bridlington —
Ellen Nussey's account of the holiday.

IN the early part of 1839 the three Bronte sisters were at home,
and Charlotte and Anne decided that they ought to take steps
to earn their own living. Anne, the youngest daughter,
secured an appointment first ; she was now nineteen, and,
though never so definite in her views as her sisters, she was not
lacking in courage. The old people at Haworth described her
as gentle, sweet and good, with very pretty features, and long
curls of light brown hair. Her first situation was with a
Mrs. Ingham, at Blake Hall, Mirfield — a fine country mansion
surrounded by a park. The house is still in existence, and is
occupied by a relative of the people who were the tenants in
the time of Anne Bronte's governess days. As Agnes Grey
never became popular, little attention has been directed to
Anne's account of the family in her novel, but, in a preface to
a new edition, she tells her critics who have accused her of
exaggeration that the story is true enough. If that is so, she
had a very hard time of it.

Charlotte Bronte was at that time hoping to find a suitable
appointment in a private family, for her experience as governess
in Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head and afterwards at Dews-
bury Moor had proved too much for her highly-strung and
conscientious nature.

138

CHARLOTTE'S FIRST OFFER OF MARRIAGE 139

It was after her serious breakdown at Dewsbury Moor that,
on the advice of the local doctor, Mr. Bronte invited Mary and
Martha Taylor to Haworth, and in one of her letters to Ellen
Nussey Charlotte gives a pretty picture of the happy group
at the parsonage, during the holiday. Branwell and lively
little Martha Taylor, who was known as Miss Boisterous,
seem to have got on well together, and the society of the
sisters restored Charlotte to health. It was an attack of
hypochondria which she mentions in The Professor.

It was just after Charlotte's serious illness that she received
her first offer of marriage from the Rev. Henry Nussey, when
she was twenty-three years of age. Her determined rejection
of the proposal has been considered a proof that she had an
aversion from marriage. Mrs. Gaskell writes of Charlotte :
" Her first proposal of marriage was quietly declined, and put
on one side. Matrimony did not enter into her scheme of life,
but good, sound, earnest labour did." This, however, is
quite a mistake, for few women ever gave more thought to
matrimony than Charlotte Bronte. Marriage, in her view,
should mean a real union between two souls, such as existed
between Rochester and Jane Eyre, Heathcliff and Catherine
in Wuthering Heights, and Paul Emanuel and Lucy Snowe
in Villette. There was to be a fusing of true passion between
two spirits, such as few women could ever imagine, much less
experience. Charlotte Bronte's idea of marriage for herself
was much beyond that which she entertained for her friend
Ellen Nussey, simply because she knew that Ellen Nussey
could be satisfied with far less than she herself could be content
ever to accept ; hence her letters of advice about marriage
are tame enough, which probably led Mrs. Gaskell to think
that she had no eagerness for marriage, but the novels prove
the opposite. No woman had a greater desire for a true
marriage and the subject was never far from her thoughts.
Charlotte Bronte's first offer of marriage was from the brother
of her friend Ellen Nussey. He was a clergyman, and at the
time he wrote proposing marriage to Charlotte Bronte he was
curate at Earnley, near Chichester. To anyone who has
read Mr. Nussey's diary, it is very certain he was not the man

140 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

to mate with Charlotte Bronte. In his diary Mr. Nussey
mentions under date, Tuesday 25th (1831) : "Went with my
sister Ellen to the Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Mirfield."
As Charlotte Bronte became a pupil at Roe Head School
a few days before Ellen Nussey, it is possible she met Mr.
Nussey there. He was evidently anxious to write his diary
that others might see it, for in March, 1828, he enters —

" Whoever after my decease may be led to peruse these
pages which have been written or may hereafter be written,
I pray them not to read as critics, but for profit. These are
private thoughts penned for my own personal profit."

Ellen Nussey wished to save Charlotte Bronte from the
drudgery of teaching amongst strangers, and her deep concern
for her friend, together with her love for her brother, caused
her to try her hand at match-making. Miss Nussey was not
afraid to own in later days that she had hoped the proposal
would meet with success. This would have enabled her
to be more closely associated with Charlotte Bronte, who was
not unaware of the advantage of the engagement from this
standpoint. She even mentioned it to Ellen Nussey in a
letter after she had refused the proposal. A short time before,
Charlotte Bronte had written to Ellen Nussey saying : "I
often plan the pleasant life which we might lead together
.... My eyes fill with tears when I contrast the bliss of such
a state, brightened by hopes of the future, with the melan-
choly state I now live in." Although Charlotte Bronte hated
teaching, she was answering advertisements with the hope of
obtaining a situation. This Ellen Nussey knew, and the
proposal from Mr. Nussey was sent on 28th February — three
months before Charlotte Bronte got the situation at
Stonegappe.

There is no record of the cool, calm, matter-of-fact proposal,
which Charlotte Bronte received from Henry Nussey, though
there is in his diary,"now in the possession of Mr. J. J. Stead,
of Heckmondwike, a brief reference to the circumstance, from
which it is easy to guess that the offer was one of convenience
rather than of genuine love.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S VIEW OF MARRIAGE 141

" I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer : yes, St.
John, and I scorn you when you offer it,*' says Jane Eyre, and
it is well known that the Rev. Henry Nussey was not really
in love with Charlotte Bronte.

The young curate was evidently more intent on finding a
housekeeper than a wife, and he told Charlotte Bronte frankly
that he intended to take pupils, and in due time he should need
a wife to take care of them. In Jane Eyre the author says —

" He asks me to be his wife, and has no more of a husband's
heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock, down which
the stream is foaming in yonder gorge. He prizes me as a
soldier would a good weapon ; and that is all."

Ellen Nussey was so anxious to know if Charlotte Bronte
had received the proposal from her brother that she wrote to
ask her. In reply Charlotte Bronte wisely says that if Ellen
Nussey had not mentioned the matter she should not have
done so.

"March 12, 1839.

"... I had a kindly leaning towards him, because he is an
amiable and well-disposed man. Yet I had not, and could
not have, that intense attachment which would make me
willing to die for him ; and if ever I marry it must be hi that
light of adoration that I will regard my husband. Ten to one
I shall never have the chance again ; but n'importe. Moreover,
I was aware that he knew so little of me he could hardly be
conscious to whom he was writing. Why ! it would startle
him to see me in my natural home character ; he would think
I was a wild, romantic enthusiast indeed. I could not sit
all day long making a grave face before my husband. I would
laugh, and satirise, and say whatever came into my head first.
And if he were a clever man, and loved me, the whole world,
weighed in the balance against his smallest wish, would be
light as air."

This answer refutes Mrs. Gaskell's description of Charlotte
Bronte as being a sad, unhappy woman at this time, and it
is noticeable that Charlotte wishes to marry a clever man ;
hence her enthusiasm for Mr. Heger in later days.

142 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTfiS

The Rev. Henry Nussey was undoubtedly the prototype
of •" St. John Rivers " in Jane Eyre, and the cold, heartless,
though nevertheless business-like proposal to the little school-
mistress in the novel is based on this first proposal of marriage
in 1839. After an interval of seventy-four years, it is almost
sacrilege to handle Mr. Nussey's diary, in which he has entered
his unfortunate love affairs, for it is necessary to mention that
just before proposing to Charlotte Bronte he had proposed
to the daughter of his former Vicar, Mr. Lutwidge, and, on the
day of receiving a refusal from this lady, he proposed to
Charlotte Bronte. In his diary he says —

" Saturday, 16 [February, 1839]. Received a letter from
Mr. L., senr., with a negative to my wishes. Thy will, O Lord,
be done."

" Monday, 18. Wrote again to M. A. L. and to sister Ellen."

It was probably in answer to this that Ellen Nussey sug-
gested the approach to Charlotte Bronte, for the next entry
reads —

" Thursday, 28. (Henry Nussey's birthday.) On Tuesday
last received a decisive reply from M. A. L.'s papa. A loss,
but I trust a providential one. Believe not her will, but her
father's. All right. God knows best what is good for us,
for his Church, and for his own glory. This I humbly desire.
And His will be done, and not mine in this or in anything else.
Evermore give me this spirit of my lord and master. Wrote
to Yorke, friend C. B. [Charlotte Bronte'], John and George
also " [his brothers].

"Saturday, 9th March. . . . Received an unfavourable
report from C. B. The will of the Lord be done."

According to Mr. Nussey's diary, Mr. Lutwidge asked him
to resign his cuiacy on account of " the inadequacy of my
powers to fulfil its duties." Mr. Nussey was in ill health at
the time.

It is probable that Charlotte Bronte knew of the proposal
to Miss Lutwidge, for in Jane Eyre St. John Rivers has a some-
what similar experience with Miss Rosamond Oliver before
proposing to Jane Eyre, and a reply telling of Miss Oliver's

REV. HENRY NUSSEY 143

engagement is received from Miss Oliver's papa ; Jane Eyre
is as definite in her refusal as was Charlotte Bronte.

Not only with regard to the offer of marriage is Mr. Nussey
the prototype of " St. John Rivers," but also in the fact that
he wished to become a missionary, and was greatly interested
in missionary work. In his diary there are no fewer than
fifteen references to missionaries and his desire to help in the
foreign mission work. It is noticeable the names Elliot and
Poole appear in this diary and both are used in Jane Eyre.

Henry Nussey was one of a family of eleven children. One
of his brothers, Joshua, was a clergyman, being curate of
St. John's, Westminster. Two of the brothers were doctors
of repute, being surgeons-in-ordinary to King William IV and
to Queen Victoria.

He was born at Birstall in 1812, thus being four years older
than Charlotte Bronte. He received a good education,
and was, at an early age, destined for the Church. His diary
reveals a character in many respects like St. John Rivers :
" Zealous in his ministerial labours, and blameless in his
life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental
serenity, that inward content, which should be the reward
of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist."
So closely does this describe him that Charlotte might have
seen his diary.

At the age of twenty he entered Magdalene College, Cam-
bridge, and was recognised as an evangelical. His diary con-
tains many references to spiritual matters, and shows that he
was a devout and spiritually -minded man. According to his
diary he became greatly interested in foreign missions when
about sixteen —

" I trust I shall be called to the ministry, and should it be
the Lord's will, I would, for Christ's sake, gladly be called to be
a missionary, if I could in any degree be an instrument in God's
hands, of promoting the salvation of mankind."

He was prevented from carrying out his intention of becoming
a missionary by an injury to his head, caused by a fall from a
restive horse. He mentions this in his diary. He was ill

144 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

for a long time and he gave up the idea of going abroad, as it
might be unfavourable to his ultimate recovery. In one of
her letters, Charlotte Bronte speaks of the Nusseys as being
" far from strong, and having no stamina." George Nussey,
another brother, suffered for some time from mental trouble,
and, in the privately printed volume of Charlotte Bronte's
letters in which she mentions the brother's affliction, Miss
Nussey has scored out the references to her brother in her own
copy of the book.

It is very evident that the young curate did not break his
heart after Charlotte Bronte's refusal, for he shortly after-
wards became engaged to Miss Emily Prescott, of Eversley, and
was married at Ever ton, near Lymington, Hampshire, on 22nd
May, 1845. He had by then been appointed Vicar of Hather-
sage, in Derbyshire. Ellen Nussey sent Charlotte a portrait
of her brother Henry in 1843 when she was at Brussels.

Charlotte Bronte never regretted refusing her friend's brother,
and when, six months afterwards, she heard that he was
engaged to be married she wrote a friendly letter, congratu-
lating him on the event. An obituary column of the Daily
Mirror of 12th February, 1907, thus recorded : " Nussey— On
2nd February, at Nice, Emily, widow of the late Rev. Henry
Nussey, formerly Vicar of Hathersage, aged 95."

Mr. Nussey, like St. John Rivers, started a Sunday School
at Hathersage, which figures as Morton in Jane Eyre, but the
Vicar never gained the desire of his heart to go out as a
missionary to India as was the case with St. John Rivers.

Christmas always found the Bronte sisters at home, and,
though they seem never to have made it a very gay season,
the sisters and brothers enjoyed it in their own quiet way.
Haworth kept up Christmas in the old-fashioned manner,
and as the villagers were typical Yorkshire people, renowned
for their thrift, there were few homes that were not provided
with an abundance of Christmas fare.

The Vicarage kitchen was modelled on the Yorkshire plan,
and, although Miss Branwell would have liked to introduce
Cornish pasties and clotted cream, Tabby Aykroyd and
Martha Brown, and in earlier years Nancy and Sarah Garrs,

A SCHOOL PROJECT 145

provided true Yorkshire fare. Emily Bronte was especially
clever in cooking and in making delicious Yorkshire bread and
cakes.

Christmas also seemed to be the time when the Bronte
sisters met in conference to discuss ways and means, and at
the end of 1839 Charlotte, Emily and Bran well were living
at home, Anne being the only one who was employed at that
time outside the Vicarage.

As the daughters of Mr. Bronte" gained experience in teaching,
they hoped to begin a school of their own on the east coast of
Yorkshire, and naturally this was a constant topic of conversa-
tion during the Christmas time. The principal difficulty was
to obtain sufficient money for such a venture, especially as
both the Vicar and Miss Branwell were afraid to risk their
small means on such an enterprise. It is quite certain that
the father did not wish to lose his three daughters from the
home, and in consequence he did not encourage the school
plan ; nor did Miss Branwell care to be left alone to manage
the brusque Yorkshire servants, though it is evident that
neither Charlotte nor Emily had a very tender regard for the
old aunt, whose unsympathetic and dictatorial manners
they much resented.

Much as Emily loved the old home and the moors, her little
diary, written when she was just twenty-three, shows that
she had her dream of getting away with her sisters, and
she pictures the two sisters and herself happy in " a flourishing
seminary " with plenty of money, and her father, aunt and
brother either being on a visit to them, or just returning from
a visit. After the Christmas vacation, Anne returned to her
appointment at Thorpe Green, Little Ouseburn. As Emily
was more or less essential at the Vicarage, Charlotte was left
without definite employment, though, as Tabby, the old servant,
had to leave for a time, Charlotte was happy blackleading
stoves, ironing the linen and managing to burn it, much to
Miss BranwelPs vexation, whilst Emily was busy with the
cooking.

Charlotte, in her outspoken way, says : " We are such odd
animals ; we prefer this to having a strange face amongst us."

10 (2200)

146 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Not to be daunted, she advertised for a situation as governess,
and answered advertisements, but for some time her efforts
met with no success.

In May, 1839, however, she obtained a temporary situation
as governess to the children of Mrs. John Benson Sidgwick,
at Stonegappe, Lothersdale, near Kildwick and Cononley,
in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Mr. Sidgwick was a woollen manufacturer at Skipton, a
few miles away. Mrs. Gaskell tells us that she did not visit
Stonegappe, when collecting materials for the Life of Charlotte
Bronte ; neither did she visit Upper Wood House, Rawdon,
the only other place where Charlotte Bronte was a private
governess. We are not given any reason for her omitting
visits to these places, but it is probable that she did not think
that either place had influenced Charlotte Bronte very much.
How mistaken this view was may be gathered from the most
exciting chapters of Jane Eyre, for it is now known that
Gateshead Hall, described in the early part of the novel, was
based upon Stonegappe, and the incidents connected with
Bertha Mason, the mad wife of Rochester, were suggested by
a visit with the Sidgwick family to a house at Swarcliffe, near
Harrogate, which Mrs. Sidgwick's father — Mr. Greenwood —
had rented for the summer, during the time when Charlotte
Bronte was a governess in his family.

Through the kindness of the owner of Stonegappe, I was
allowed, some years ago, to go through the various rooms in
the house, and it is quite evident that Charlotte Bronte had
the place in her mind when she described Gateshead Hall in
Jane Eyre. A bedroom was pointed out as being " the red-
room " in which Jane Eyre was supposed to have had a fit.
This room was shut off from the other parts of the house, and
was approached by a long corridor. A child, locked in that
bedroom, would naturally be terrified, and from the outside
it was clear that it would have little chance of escape. The
long, shady drive leading to the house, and the breakfast-room
on the ground floor, are still as they were in Charlotte Bronte's
time. It was in the cosy window-seat of this room that Jane
Eyre was supposed to have read Bewick's British Birds,

STONEGAPPE 147

whilst secluded, as she imagined, by the folds of the scarlet
drapery.

Stonegappe is a large, roomy house, beautifully situated
on the slope of the hill overlooking the valley through which
runs the Lothersdale beck. There is a fine view from the bay
windows in the front of the house, and the beauty of the
surrounding district appealed to Charlotte Bronte. Writing
to her sister Emily on 8th June, 1839, she says —

" I have striven hard to be pleased with my new situation.
The country, the house, and the grounds are, as I have said,
divine ; but, alack-a-day ! there is such a thing as seeing all
beautiful around you — pleasant woods, white paths, green
lawns, and the blue sunshiny sky — and not having a free
moment or a free thought left to enjoy them."

She complained bitterly of the treatment which she received
at Stonegappe from Mrs. Sidgwick —

"The childrexi are constantly with me. As for correcting
them, I quickly found that was out of the question ; they are
to do as they like. A complaint to the mother only brings
black looks on myself, and unjust, partial excuses to screen the
children. I have tried that plan once, and succeeded so nota-
bly I shall try no more. I said in my last letter that Mrs. Sidg-
wick did not know me. I now begin to find she does not intend
to know me ; that she cares nothing about me, except to contrive
how the greatest possible quantity of labour may be got out
of me ; and to that end she overwhelms me with oceans of
needlework ; yards of cambric to hem, muslin night-caps to
make, and, above all things, dolls to dress."

Charlotte Bronte seemed to have a good opinion of Mr.
Sidgwick, though, of course, he had little to do with the
children. All through her life she thought more highly of
men than of women, and, with the exception of Ellen Nussey
and Mary Taylor, her relations with men appear to have been
more satisfactory than with her own sex.

Although Mrs. Gaskell did not give the names of the
employers, they were very quickly traced, and much pain
was caused to the family by the thinly-veiled references to

148 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Mrs. Sidgwick. As a matter of fact, there was much to be said
for those with whom Charlotte Bronte lived as a private
governess. In spite of all efforts to prove the contrary, it
cannot be said that she had any real love for children. The
peevish reference in her letter to " above all things, dolls to
dress," is too convincing. A woman of twenty-three who
loved children would find the dressing of dolls an interesting
occupation. It is quite certain that she was not adapted for
the life of a governess ; it is doubtful if those committed to
her care derived much benefit from her instruction and super-
vision. All Charlotte's Sunday school scholars agree that she
was very strict, and, with one exception, her pupils' names
never occur in her letters.

Mrs. Gaskell tells of Charlotte Bronte's heroism in shielding
one of the little Sidgwicks, who had thrown a stone at her, and
struck her on the temple. When Mrs. Sidgwick asked what
had caused the mark, Charlotte Bronte quietly said, "An
accident, ma'am." The children in consequence honoured
her for not telling tales, and became more amenable to discipline.
The little culprit especially showed his gratitude some time
afterwards, by putting his hand into Charlotte Bronte's, and
exclaiming : " I love 'ou, Miss Bronte." The mother was
evidently surprised, for she exclaimed before all the children :
" Love the governess, my dear ! " Mrs. Gaskell does not tell
us that at the end of the letter relating this incident Charlotte
Bronte says to Emily : " Mrs. Sidgwick expects me to do things
I cannot do — to love her children and be entirely devoted to
them." So that the incident says more for the pupil than the
governess.

The family at Stonegappe naturally resented Mrs. Gaskell's
reference to incidents occurring within the family circle during
Charlotte Bronte's stay with them.

Mr. John Benson Sidgwick was cousin to Archbishop Benson,
who paid several visits to Stonegappe in his youth, but not
during Charlotte Bronte's stay. In the Life of Edward White
Benson, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, by Mr. A. C.
Benson, who once wrote of Charlotte Bronte as " the first of
women writers of every age," it is recorded —

MRS. SIDGWICK 149

"Charlotte Bronte acted as governess to my cousins at
Stonegappe for a few months in 1839. Few traditions of her
connection with the Sidgwicks survive. She was, according
to her own account, very unkindly treated, bat it is clear that
she had no gifts for the management of children, and was also
in a very morbid condition the whole time. My cousin
Benson Sidgwick, now Vicar of Ashby Parva, certainly on one
occasion threw a Bible at Miss Bronte ! and all that another
cousin can recollect of her is that if she was invited to walk
to church with them, she thought she was being ordered about
like a slave ; if she was not invited, she imagined that she was
excluded from the family circle. Both Mr. and Mrs. John
Sidgwick were extraordinarily benevolent people, much beloved,
and would not willingly have given pain to anyone connected
with them."1

It is also on record that Charlotte Bronte, when with the
Sidgwicks at Swarcliffe, stayed in bed the whole of one day,
sulking, and thus left Mrs. Sidgwick to look after the children
as best she could. Clearly Charlotte's genius was not helpful
to her as a teacher.

During half the time that Charlotte Bronte was in the employ
of Mrs. Sidgwick, she was with the family at Swarcliffe, near
Harrogate. Whilst there she visited Norton Conyers, an old
mansion, that has been in the Graham family since the
seventeenth century.

Though she does not appear to have mentioned Norton
Conyers in her letters, Ellen Nussey well remembered her
giving an account of it, and relating the tradition of the mad
woman associated with the place. A former owner said
that he was convinced that the interior of Thornfield Hall,
referred to in Jane Eyre, must have been taken from Norton
Conyers, as it is true to the minutest detail.

Continuing her description, the novelist turns to the grounds
around the Rydings at Birstall, and Thornfield Hall becomes
a composite picture, for the Rydings is a two-storied building,
whereas Thornfield Hall is a three-storied mansion, though
the garden and the sunk fence are common to both houses.

1 The Life, of Edward White Benson.

150 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

A relative of a former resident of Norton Conyers said that
when Charlotte Bronte was staying at Swarcliffe, the third
storey of Norton Conyers was exactly as she described it in
Jane Eyre, for Sir Bellingham Graham, who then owned the
mansion, had sold his estate near by at Nunnington, and stored
the furniture in the low upper rooms at Norton Conyers,
which gave Charlotte Bronte the impression that the furniture
had been put there to make room for the more costly in the
lower rooms. It is possible that the Greenwood family was on
visiting terms with the Grahams. As one of the ancestral homes
of Yorkshire it has been open to the public from time to time.

One of the small rooms in the attic is shown as " the mad
woman's room," and there is a tradition that it was once
occupied by an insane woman. This most probably gave rise
to the story of Bertha Mason, of the West Indies.

Bertha Mason is probably suggested by Charlotte Bronte's
first school friend Mellany Hane, who was a Creole.

In later years, Charlotte Bronte mentioned more than once
in her letters how unhappy she had been whilst with the
Sidg wicks, whom she described as " proud as peacocks, and
wealthy as Jews." Immediately after the regular governess
returned she went home, disgusted with her experience.

There is no doubt that she was unhappy during her stay at
Stonegappe, and the reason is not far to seek. In a letter to
Ellen Nussey she once said : "I have a constant tendency to
scorn people who are far better than I am." On the other
hand, Mrs. Sidg wick — a good practical Yorkshire woman-
could not enter into the feelings of the little genius. They were
poles asunder in their ideas of life, and the fact that Charlotte
could say, " I hate and abhor the very thought of governess-
ship," shows that it was not likely that any employer would
be congenial to her. It is, however, just as well that teaching
did not offer a satisfactory sphere of work to her, or one of
the greatest novelists of the nineteenth century might have
been lost to the world.

Before the end of July, 1839, Charlotte Bronte was at home
again and Ellen Nussey was trying to persuade her to go with
her to the sea-coast, but Aunt Branwell was bent on a journey

A SECOND PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE 151

to Liverpool with the whole family, and delays came, one after
the other, until Charlotte Bronte lost heart and felt that she
and Ellen would not get their longed-for holiday.

At this time, when she was twenty-three years of age, she
had never seen the sea, and she was keenly desirous of carrying
out her wish.

" The idea of seeing the sea, — of being near it — watching
its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight and noonday — in
calm, perhaps in storm — fills and satisfies my mind."

The same letter, from which the above is quoted, contains
an account of a second proposal of marriage —

" I have an odd circumstance to relate to you : prepare

for a hearty laugh ! The other day, Mr. ( ), a vicar,

came to spend the day with us, bringing with him his own
curate. The latter gentleman, by name Mr. B., is a young Irish
clergyman, fresh from Dublin University. It was the first time
we had any of us seen him, but, however, after the manner of
his countrymen, he soon made himself at home. His character
appeared quickly in his conversation ; witty, lively, ardent,
clever too ; but deficient in the dignity and discretion of an
Englishman. At home, you know, I talk with ease, and am
never shy — never weighed down and oppressed by that miser-
able mauvaise honte which torments and constrains me
elsewhere. So I conversed with the Irishman, and laughed at his
jests ; and, though I saw faults in his character, excused them
because of the amusement his originality afforded. I cooled a
little, indeed, and drew in towards the latter part of the
evening, because he began to season his conversation with
something of Hibernian flattery, which I did not quite relish.
However, they went away, and no more was thought about
them. A few days after I got a letter, the direction of which
puzzled me. it being in a hand I was not accustomed to see.
Evidently it was neither from you nor Mary, my only corre-
spondents. Having opened and read it, it proved to be a
declaration of attachment and proposal of matrimony, expressed
in the ardent language of the sapient young Irishman ! I hope
you are laughing heartily. This is not like one of my

152 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

adventures, is it ? It more nearly resembles Martha's. I am
certainly doomed to be an old maid. Never mind. I made up
my mind to that fate ever since I was twelve years old.

" Well ! thought I, I have heard of love at first sight, but
this beats all ! I leave you to guess what my answer would be,
convinced that you will not do me the injustice of guessing
wrong."

This account has always been taken literally, but as a
matter of fact match-makers had again been at work. Emily
Bronte, however, might just as well have been the selected
one, if she had shown the better side of her nature.

The Vicar referred to in the letter was Mr. Hodgson, who had
been Mr. Bronte's first curate. He was anxious that his own
young curate, Mr. David Bryce, should get married, and
having suggested that the Vicar of Haworth had several
eligible daughters, he took him off to pay a call at the Haworth
Vicarage.

Mr. Bryce went quite prepared to choose one of the daughters,
and as Charlotte Bronte was the most approachable, he natur-
ally got on best with her, and with an Irishman's ready
enthusiasm proposed as soon as possible. Charlotte Bronte
does not tell us how long the interval was between the visit
and the proposal, but it became known in Haworth that the
chief reason why Charlotte Bronte and the young curate did
not become engaged was that Mr. Bryce was consumptive, and
Charlotte Bronte herself was delicate, too. Mr. Bronte was
consulted, and several letters passed between them, but,
knowing that his daughters inherited their mother's frail
constitution, he did not think it wise for his daughter to marry
a delicate man. His reasoning was quite sound, for, in less
than six months after proposing to Charlotte Bronte, the Rev.
David Bryce died at Colne and was buried in the Christ Church
graveyard.

The second offer of marriage, which Mrs. Gaskell refers to
as " uncommon in the lot of most women " and as " a testi-
mony to the unusual power of attraction " in one " so plain
in feature " is not quite so romantic as Mrs. Gaskell would have
us believe.

A HOLIDAY AT THE SEASIDE 153

Ellen Nussey afterwards renewed her attempts to get
Charlotte Bronte to accompany her to the seaside, but she
was not, at this time, successful. Mr. Bronte himself was
willing, but Miss Bran well was reluctant to agree. She was
always harder with Charlotte Bronte than Mr. Bronte himself.
It was evidently a question of means, and the result was that
Miss Nussey was invited to stay at the Ha worth Vicarage,
which Charlotte urged would be less costly ; but Miss Nussey
was determined Charlotte should have a holiday, and the
visit to Easton and Bridlington was arranged. Thirty years
afterwards Ellen Nussey wrote an interesting account of this
memorable holiday.

" Charlotte's first visit to the sea-coast deserves a little
more notice than her letters give of the circumstances — it was
an event eagerly coveted, but hard to attain. Mr. Bronte
and Miss Branwell had all manners of doubts and fears and
cautions to express, and Charlotte was sinking into despair —
there seemed only one chance of securing her the pleasure ;
her friend must fetch her ; this she did through the aid of a
dear relative, who sent her to Haworth under safe convoy, and
in a cairiage that would bring both Charlotte and her luggage —
this step proved to be the very best thing possible, the surprise
was so good in its effects, there was nothing to combat — every-
body rose into high good humours, Branwell was grandilo-
quent ; he declared ' it was a brave defeat, that the doubters
were fairly taken aback.' You have only to will a thing to
get it, so Charlotte's luggage was speedily prepared, and almost
before the horse was rested there was a quiet but triumphant
starting ; the brothers and sisters at home were not less
happy than Charlotte herself in her now secured pleasure.
It was the first of real freedom to be enjoyed either by herself
or her friend, a first experience in railway travelling, which,
however, only conveyed them through half of the route, the

stage-coach making the rest of the journey They walked

to the sea, and as soon as they were near enough for Charlotte
to see it in its expanse, she was quite overpowered, she could
not speak till she had shed some tears — she signed to her
friend to leave her and walk on \ this she did for a few steps,

154 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

knowing full well what Charlotte was passing through, and
the stern efforts she was making to subdue her emotions —
her friend turned to her as soon as she thought she might
without inflicting pain ; her eyes were red and swollen, she
was still trembling, but submitted to be led onwards where
the view was less impressive ; for the remainder of the day
she was very quiet, subdued, and exhausted. Distant glimpses
of the German Ocean had been visible as the two friends neared
the coast on the day of their arrival, but Charlotte being
without her glasses, could not see them, and when they were
described to her, she said, ' Don't tell me any more. Let me
wait.' Whenever the sound of the sea reached her ears in
the grounds around the house wherein she was a captive
guest, her spirit longed to run away and be close to it. ...

" The conventionality of most of the seaside visitors amused
Charlotte immensely. The evening Parade on the Pier struck
her as the greatest absurdity. It was an old Pier in those days,
and of short dimensions, but thither all the visitors seemed to
assemble in such numbers, it was like a packed ball-room ;
people had to march round and round in regular file to secure
any movement whatever."

This old farm at Easton, near Bridlington, is still in exist-
ence, but it is in a dilapidated condition. A friend of the
writer's wished to photograph it some three years ago, but
was not allowed. "What would the landlord think of it,
I wonder, if you showed a photograph of this old place as it
is now ? " said the tenant. It is comforting to know that
there is a water-colour painting of it by Charlotte Bronte
herself, and there is also an oil-painting of the farm, by a
well-known artist.

Mr. and Mrs. Hudson, who entertained Ellen Nussey and
Charlotte Bronte, at Easton, were, in after years, very proud
of the fact that they had Charlotte Bronte as a guest. The
water-colour painting of the farm is still held sacred by a
member of the Hudson family, but the letters of thanks and
the slippers worked for Mr. Hudson by Charlotte Bronte have
disappeared.

The walks around Easton are most delightful, and Charlotte

BRIDLINGTON 155

Bronte" very much enjoyed her month's stay with the family,
which included Mr. and Mrs. Hudson and their niece, Fanny
Whipp, who was then a child of eight whom Charlotte Bronte
called "little Hancheon." This holiday stood out as a real
bit of freedom for Charlotte Bronte, who generally got the best
out of such visits. Again and again she refers to old Burlington
or Bridlington, as it is now called —

" Have you forgotten the sea by this time, Ellen ? Is it
grown dim in your mind ? Or can you still see it, dark, blue,
and green, and foam- white, and hear it roaring roughly when
the wind is high, or rushing softly when it is calm ? . . . I am
as well as need be, and very fat. I think of Easton very often,
and of worthy Mr. Hudson and his kind-hearted helpmate,
and of our pleasant walks to Harlequin Wood, and to Boynton,
our merry evenings, our romps with little Hancheon, etc., etc.
If we both live, this period of our lives will long be a theme for
pleasant recollection."

Fanny Whipp is said to have suggested Paulina in Villette,
but Paulina has affinity with Charlotte Bronte's own
childhood, in so far as she was little for her age.

Such was the favourable impression made on Charlotte
Bronte by her visit to Easton and Burlington, that she longed
to make her home there, and in later days she planned to have
a school in the vicinity, to be managed by her sister and
herself —

" In thinking of all possible and impossible places where
we could establish a school, I have thought of Burlington, or
rather of the neighbourhood of Burlington. ... I fancy the
ground in the East Riding is less fully occupied than in the
West."

She employed part of her time when at Easton in writing
and drawing, and on a subsequent visit, ten years afterwards,
when Anne Bronte had just been buried in Scarborough
churchyard, Charlotte Bronte went to kind Mrs. Hudson's
for rest and quiet, before going home to her father at Ha worth.
It is possible that the chapter in Shirley, headed " The valley
of the shadow of death," was written there, for the genial

156 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

farmer and his wife remembered that she often took her writing
material into the garden and wrote for hours.

She never forgot the kindness of these Easton friends, and
she sent them several presents. One was a painting of Mrs.
Hudson, whose maiden name was Sophia Whipp; a Mrs.
Whipp figures in Shirley as the landlady of Mr. Sweeting of
Nunnerly. In the painting of the farm Mr. and Mrs. Hudson
are seated in the garden, and as a flock of birds passed by
Mr. Hudson remarked, " Be sure you put the crows in, Miss
Bronte."

CHAPTER XII

BRANWELL BRONTE AND THE CURATES AT HAWORTH

1839-1842

BRANWELL secured an appointment on the 1st of January,
1840, as private tutor at a Mr. Postlethwaite's, at Broughton-
in-Furness, in Cumberland. He had had a little experience
as an usher in a school near Halifax some two years previously,
but he had not remained long at the school. Both the father
and aunt were disappointed with Branwell's failure to make
for himself a position in life, and it was even suggested that he
should qualify for holy orders, for which the office of teacher
was considered to be a suitable preparation, as was the case
with his father.

Like some other misguided parents, Mr. Bronte assumed that,
when all other openings in life failed, his son might turn his
attention to the Church ; but Branwell, much to his credit,
declined to consider the sacred ministry as a possible sphere
of work, and afterwards, writing sarcastically to his friend
Mr. Grundy, he stated that the only qualification he had for
the ministry was a certain amount of hypocrisy.

At Broughton-in-Furness Branwell had a comfortable
appointment with a highly respectable family, and those left
behind at the Vicarage hoped he would do well, though
Charlotte, who was always the farseeing member of the family,
appears to have had some doubts. She writes —

" One thing, however, will make the daily routine more
unvaried than ever. Branwell, who lived to enliven us is to
leave us in a few days and enter the situation of a private
tutor in the neighbourhood of Ulverston. How he will like

157

158 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

to settle remains yet to be seen. At present he is full of hope
and resolution. I, who know his variable nature, and his
strong turn for active life, dare not be too sanguine."

Evidently the members of the family were anxious to get
Bran well away from the associations of the Black Bull, where
the masonic " Lodge of the Three Graces," of which Bran well
was secretary, held its meetings.

On the Christmas day previous to starting for Broughton-in-
Furness, Branwell acted as organist, and in the minute book
of the Masonic register at Haworth, Bran well's name appears
for the last time. Although, no doubt, he made many good
resolutions, he could not get from Haworth to Ulverston
without joining with a drunken set of travellers at the Royal
Hotel, Kendal. If this had been found out, it would most
likely have cost him his appointment before he had really
entered upon his duties.

The late Mr. Francis A. Leyland, of Halifax, in his Bronte
Family, published in 1886, tries to excuse Branwell, but a
letter written by Branwell himself reveals a man devoid of
ordinary virtues, though in the earlier part of the letter there
is evidence of some intention to reform. It seems a pity that
this versatile young man of so many gifts could not be kept
healthily employed away from his former associates.

This damaging letter was written to Mr. John Brown, the
sexton, one of whose daughters admitted to me that her
father " liked his glass/' and was much to blame for " leading
young Branwell on." Branwell loved a joke, and in order to
cause amusement, he did not mind becoming " the fool for
the company." John Brown was fond of telling of Branwell's
cleverness, and like others in Haworth, he expected that
Branwell would ultimately bring much credit to the Haworth
Vicarage after "he had sown his wild oats." No one was
more sorry, when Branwell died, than the Haworth sexton,
and it is in some respects unfortunate that this letter to John
Brown was not destroyed, for Miss Robinson, in her mono-
graph on Emily Bronte, only quoted from a memorised copy,
omitting the postscript, "Write directly. Of course, you
won't show this letter, and for Heaven's sake, blot out all

ONE OF BRANWELL BRONTE'S LETTERS 159

lines scored with red ink." The original was said, by the sex-
ton's family, to have been lost in the early seventies, but one
of the Browns knew it by heart, and it was this version, which
got into the possession of Mr. Wood, the local carpenter, that
Miss Robinson used. But before the original was lost, one of
Branwell's friends had made an accurate copy, taking care
to blot out the names of certain people in Haworth, whose
families are still well known in the village, and it was this
reproduction that the late Mr. Francis A. Leyland, of Halifax,
used in his Bronte Family. The letter was written some ten
weeks after Branwell left Haworth, and was addressed to the
sexton who was referred to as " Old Knave of Trumps."

Everyone who knew Branwell, except the members of his
family, had an opportunity of reading this unfortunate com-
munication, and John Brown's brother prided himself on being
able to repeat the whole of it from memory. Branwell's
friends did not take the letter so seriously as the biographers
of the Brontes have done, for the simple reason that they
knew the writer. At home he was allowed great liberty, and
it was expected that he would escape all contamination ;
whilst care was exercised in determining the friends of the
girls, he was allowed in the main to go his own way. He had
neither the balance of mind nor the strength that his father
possessed ; nor could he claim that dignity and reserve which
always proved useful to the Rev. Patrick Bronte.

Branwell, much to his own disgust, was, like Charlotte,
small and insignificant in appearance, and the Haworth
people were fond of saying that he brushed his hair high to
give him a few extra inches. Although many people thought
him conceited, he was the most approachable in the family,
and was always welcome wherever he went.

The Vicar could often be seen visiting his parishioners, some
at a great distance across the moors, but father and son were
rarely seen together. Previous to going to Brought on,
Branwell was secretary of a temperance society, and it is only
fair to say that certain efforts were made to keep him from
drink.
After the death of Patrick Bronte's wife in 1820, when Branwell

160 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

was a boy of three, the father seems to have lived somewhat
the life of a recluse, and, whilst omitting no duty connected
with his church, he left his children far too much to themselves.
The girls found companionship with each other, but it was
difficult to find a place for an only boy in such a home. It
is not, therefore, a matter for surprise that Branwell never
acquired sufficient self-control or will power to steer a clear
course in his brief career. Even to this day, however, he is
remembered with pride, not unmixed with pity, in his native
village. Only the other day, an old man in Haworth who
remembered Branwell, said, " Mrs. Gaskell told a pack o' lies
about him." His silly letter to his old friend probably was
more highly coloured than was necessary, and, like Charlotte,
he wrote with much enthusiasm and a tendency to undue
exaggeration.

He had the gift of imagination like his sisters, and not
unfrequently he would romance about incidents for the mere
pleasure of entertaining and " showing off " to his friends.

A letter not only betrays the character of the writer, but
sometimes gives some indication of the character of the receiver.
This epistle could only have been written to friends who
delighted in hearing what may be described as " spicy " news.

Like everything else that is associated with the Brontes,
BranwelPs letter was greatly discussed, though, if Charlotte and
Emily Bronte" had not become famous novelists, the letter
would soon have passed into oblivion.

Branwell has suffered probably more than any member of
the family owing to contrast with his two brilliant sisters,
and he has received more blame than he deserved from those
who have followed Mrs. Gaskell and Harriet Martineau in
attributing to him " the coarseness of Charlotte Bronte's
novels." " Because Patrick Branwell Bronte was what he
was, the Bronte novels were what they were," but that is not
so ; Branwell was not a " brainless sot," as Mr. Shorter describes
him ; probably Mr.Nicholls gave Mr. Shorter that impression,
but, as he did not know him well until after his dismissal from
Thorpe Green, even he was not able to judge. The Haworth
people well remember his tramping the moorland district, gun

BROUGHTON-IN-FURNESS 161

in hand ; for, like his father, he loved shooting. A military
career, with its necessary discipline, might have suited him,
but his shortness of stature was an insuperable obstacle.

Mr. Francis A. Leyland's Bronte Family is worthy of recogni-
tion, because he gave the better side of Bran well's life. But one
of BranwelPs letters, published in the Yorkshire Observer in
November, 1911, proves that Bran well had contracted debts
when in Bradford, which Mr. Leyland denies. Ellen Nussey
thought he had conveyed a too favourable impression of
Bran well, and had not shown sufficient appreciation of Charlotte,
and for that reason she proposed to tell the true story of
Charlotte Bronte through her letters. None of the biographers
suited Ellen Nussey, and unfortunately she was not capable
of writing a Life herself.

Broughton-in-Furness is a beautiful district on the northern
shores of Morecambe Bay, and Bran well seems to have been
impressed by the charm of the place, for some of his crude
oil-paintings are of the district around Black Comb. Whilst
there, he came under the influence of the Lake District associa-
tions. Like Charlotte, he had always been attracted by
Wordsworth's poems on nature, and he was devoted to Coleridge
and Christopher North. Before going to Broughton-in-
Furness, Bran well had written to Wordsworth in 1837, and
also to Hartley Coleridge, and whilst living in Broughton he
paid at least one visit to Hartley Coleridge. Mrs. Gaskell saw
his letter, when she was staying in the Lake District many
years afterwards, for although Wordsworth was disgusted with
Bran well's letter and did not answer the " would-be " poet,
he kept his letter, and when the name of Bronte became
famous it was given to Mr. Quillinan, Wordsworth's
son-in-law, who showed it to Mrs. Gaskell.

At a distance of some four or five miles from Broughton-in-
Furness is a hill known as Black Comb, which overlooks the
small seaside village of Silecroft. It is probable that Bran well
climbed the Black Comb, for he composed a short poem about
it, as it appeared to him in the distance.

" Far off, and half revealed, 'mid shade and light,
Black Comb half smiles, half frowns."

XI — (2300)

162 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Evidently he knew Wordsworth's fine description of the view
from the summit of the Black Comb, which is one of great
beauty on every side. Branwell, like his father, was no poet,
though he liked to flatter himself that he was, and he wrote
several vain letters to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the editor
of Blackwood's Magazine.

Mrs. Oliphant says that Blackwoods probably thought the
letters were from a madman, and so they never replied to them.
At the same time, they felt sufficiently interested to preserve
them, and because they were written by a member of the
Bronte family, and not at all for their intrinsic value, they
appear in Mrs. Oliphant's book, The House of Blackwood.

Branwell left Broughton-in-Furness at the end of six months,
it is said at his father's desire, and his next appointment was
as a clerk on the Leeds and Manchester railway, first at
Sowerby Bridge and then at Luddenden Foot. Charlotte
writes of him, when in one of her gay humours —

"A distant relation of mine, one Patrick Boanerges, [Mrs.
Gaskell puts 'Patrick Branwell,' showing that she knew it
referred to the brother] has set off to seek his fortune in the
wild, wandering, adventurous, romantic, knight-errant-like
capacity of clerk on the Leeds and Manchester Railroad.
Leeds and Manchester — where are they ? Cities in the wilderness
like Tadmor, alias Palmyra — are they not ? "

Sowerby Bridge and Luddenden Foot are only a mile apart,
and, although the appointment which Branwell had obtained
was uncongenial and unsuitable, the district was one that
ought to have inspired his mind, and provided material for
the novels he proposed to write. Mr. Leyland says he did
write at least one volume.

The district is still recognised as a holiday resort for picnic
parties. Hardcastle Crags, near by, is well worth a visit,
and Hebden Bridge, with its Golden Valley, Sowerby,
Mytholmroyd and Erringden have pretty surroundings.
Erringden was a royal deer park in the time of the Plantagenets.
Hebden Bridge is a pleasant walk from Haworth in summer
over the moors, and the frugal Yorkshiremen, anxious to visit

BRANWELL BRONTE AS A RAILWAY CLERK 163

Manchester or other towns on the Lancashire side of the
Pennine Range, often make this journey to Hebden Bridge,
thus saving the cost of the roundabout railway route through
Keighley and Halifax. Charlotte Bronte, in the lonely days
before her marriage, would sometimes walk, or occasionally
drive to Sowerby Bridge, where lived the Rev. Sutcliffe Sowden,
who had the honour of performing the marriage ceremony
between Charlotte Bronte and Mr. Nicholls.

The valley of Hebden is beautifully wooded, and Charlotte
Bronte was very fond of this district and also that of Hepton-
stall, where there is an old church of St. Thomas of Canterbury.
One of the smaller glens is known as Crimsworth, which
furnished the name to the English teacher in The Professor.

William Crimsworth had for his original Charlotte Bronte
herself, and this was her first attempt to masquerade as a man.
Mr. Francis A. Leyland considers that Bran well was the original
of Crimsworth in the earlier chapters, where Crimsworth is in
a manufacturer's office. Bran well may have suggested the
poorly paid clerk, but, when he gets to Brussels, Crimsworth
is undoubtedly Charlotte herself.

The rush of water from the surrounding heights beneath
the Hardcastle Crags, on its way to the river Calder at Hebden
Bridge, was a sight that appealed to Charlotte and Emily
Bronte, just as the roar of the sea did at Bridlington, and
after her marriage she and Mr. Nicholls were fond of walking
over the moor to see the Hebden Bridge district, and also to
visit the incumbent of Mytholm at his home at Hanging Royd,
Hebden Bridge. Mr. Sutcliffe Sowden knew Bran well Bronte
when he was engaged at Sowerby station and at Luddenden
Foot, and sometimes he walked over to the wooden shed,
which did duty for the railway clerk's office. Like many of
his friends, Mr. Sowden was sorry for the youth, who never
found his right sphere of work.

It is pleasant at this time to turn to Mr. Francis A. Ley land's
description of the unfortunate youth as he knew him at this time.

" It was on a bright Sunday afternoon in the autumn of 1840,
at the desire of my brother, the sculptor, that I accompanied
him to the station at Sowerby Bridge to see Bran well. The

164 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

young railway clerk was of gentleman -like appearance, and
seemed to be qualified for a much better position than the one
he had chosen. In stature he was a little below the middle
height. ... He was slim and agile in figure, yet of well-
formed outline . His complexion was clear and ruddy, and the
expression of his face, at the time, lightsome and cheerful. His
voice had a ringing sweetness, and the utterance and use of his
English were perfect. Bran well appeared to be in excellent
spirits, and showed none of those traces of intemperance with
which some writers have unjustly credited him about this
period of his life."1

Others who lived near to Sowerby Bridge, and who met
Branwell about this time, testified to his uniformly good con-
duct and respectable appearance. After being at Sowerby
Bridge for a few months, he was transferred to Luddenden
Foot, a new station about a mile away. Mr. Francis H. Grundy,
who was assistant engineer on the line when Branwell was at
Luddenden Foot, wrote in his Pictures of the Past, " Had a
position been chosen for this strange creature, for the express
purpose of driving him several steps to the bad, this must
have been it."

Unfortunately Luddenden Foot was a small village with
practically no suitable society for Branwell Bronte, and the
two public houses — The Red Lion and The Anchor — proved
an attraction which he could not resist. He had not sufficient
work fully to employ his time, and with his want of " balance "
he quickly deteriorated. If he could have met with some good
friend to take him in hand, he might have been saved.

Branwell soon began to neglect his duties, and often left
the young porter to attend to the station whilst he visited
Halifax. As might be expected, this could not be continued
but for a short time, and he was dismissed. His books were
found to be in an unsatisfactory state, and the margins were
covered with sketches and drawings. When he returned home,
Charlotte and Anne were away, and Emily was his only friend ;
she pitied him and refrained from scolding him, though
conscious of his faults.

1 The Bronte Family, by Francis A. Leyland.

CHARLOTTE'S UNFLAGGING INDUSTRY 165

Whilst Branwell had been at Sowerby Bridge and Lud-
denden Foot, Charlotte had been working hard at French.
Her replies to advertisements for a private governess had not
at first been successful, and by the kindness of her friends at
Gomersal — the Taylors of Red House — she had got the loan
of a number of French novels which she describes as " another
bale of books, containing upwards of forty volumes. I
have read about half," she writes at this time, " They are
like the rest — clever, wicked, sophistical and immoral. The
best of it is, they give one a thorough idea of France and Paris,
and are the best substitute for French conversation." It was
one of the ambitions of Charlotte Bronte's life to see the
French capital.

If there was one virtue more than any other which stood out
in Charlotte Bronte's character, it was her unflagging industry.
She was never idle, and more than any other member of the
family she took advantage of every opportunity to improve
her qualifications. She was attached to the quiet home life,
but she felt that it was necessary that she should contribute
to the family exchequer.

" Verily, it is a delightful thing to live at home, at full liberty
to do just what one pleases. But I recollect some scrubby old
fable about grasshoppers and ants, by a scrubby old knave,
yclept JEsop ; the grasshoppers sang all the summer and
starved all the winter," she writes to Ellen Nussey.

It was about this time that Mr. Bronte obtained help in his
church work ; hitherto he had been single-handed. His
first curate, the Rev. William Hodgson, seems to have given
his services without remuneration from the parish of Haworth
from 1837 to 1838. The second curate, Mr. William Weightman,
was at Haworth from 1839 to 1842 ; he caused quite a flutter
amongst the women at the Parsonage, for, with the exception
of a visit now and again from the neighbouring clergy, few
men entered the Haworth Vicarage, so that, when " Papa had
a curate of his own," life at the Parsonage became less mono-
tonous. Charlotte Bronte, who loved change, was delighted,
whilst Emily seems somewhat to have resented the intrusion

166 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

of the curates. Miss Bran well found a certain amount of
pleasure in welcoming one more member of the cloth to the
hospitality of the parsonage, whilst Anne — modest and demure
— felt some diffidence in meeting with one of the opposite sex.

It might have been better for Branwell Bronte if his father
had engaged a curate at an earlier period. Mr. Weigh tman
and Branwell seem to have been very friendly to each other
and were in the habit of corresponding when either was away
from Ha worth.

Charlotte Bronte has plenty to say to Ellen Nussey about
the gay, young curate, who formed the subject of much corre-
spondence between the two friends. Afterwards it was
discovered that he was a flirt, who experienced no difficulty
in transferring his affections from one girl to another. The
innocent banter which went on shows that the Bronte girls
formed a merry party, and Charlotte especially was not the
melancholy person which Mrs. Gaskell pictures. The curate
rather enjoyed the badinage of these girls, who loved to tease
him, and he did not resent Charlotte's drawings of his lady-
loves, nor did he mind her scoldings when he got a new fiancee.
Possibly at Ellen Nus«ey's request, Mrs. Gaskell left out from
Charlotte Bronte's letters all the references to Mr. Weightman,
except the account of his visiting one of her Sunday School
scholars and his sermon about Dissent.

When Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte was published,
the old friends of the curate wondered that more was not
included about this amiable young clergyman, who was known
to have been popular at the Vicarage, for they could remember
seeing him walking over the moors with the Vicar's daughters.
It could not be said that many of the curates enjoyed this
privilege ; as a rule they were ignored.

Emily Bronte' got the soubriquet of "Major" at this time,
because she determinedly guarded Ellen Nussey from Mr.
Weightman's attentions, and insisted on walking with her,
rather than let the young curate have the honour of Ellen's
company. It is possible that she took this course because
Mr. Weightman had paid some attention to Anne Bronte,
and Emily wished to safeguard the interests of her sister.

REV. WILLIAM WEIGHTMAN 167

Charlotte tells us that it was a picture to see the curate making
" sheep's eyes " at Anne, as she sat in the family pew. It
was this versatile curate who discovered that the Bronte girls
had never received a valentine, and in order to give them a little
innocent pleasure he walked to Bradford to post three precious
missives. Of course, they soon guessed where they were from,
and gave Mr. Weightman " a Roland for his Oliver." Some
of the neighbouring clergy also joined in the fun of sending
valentines to the Bronte girls, for in the Whitehaven News
there was a copy of the return valentine sent by Charlotte
Bronte to one of the clergy of the district in 1840. It had been
kept as a souvenir of those happy days when Charlotte was
quite unconsciously gathering the material for her portraits
of the curates who come on the scene so quickly in Shirley,
which made Charles Kingsley close the book with the
determination to read no more.

Charlotte sent a poem of eleven verses, the first and second
verses read —

"A Roland for your Oliver

We think you've just earned ;
You sent us such a valentine,
Your gift is now returned.

We cannot write or talk like you ;

We're plain folks every one ;
You've played a clever jest on us,

We thank you for the fun.

(Signed) CHARLOTTE BRONT£."

February, 1840.

Mr. Weightman was known as Celia Amelia at the Parsonage.
Ellen Nussey, in a foot-note to her volume of Charlotte Bronte's
Letters, compiled by Mr. J. Horsfall Turner, gives a short
account of Mr. Weightman.

"Celia Amelia, Mr. Bronte's curate, a lively, handsome
young man fresh from Durham University, an excellent
classical scholar. He gave a very good lecture on the Classics
at Keighley. The young ladies at the Parsonage must hear his
lecture, so he went off to a married clergyman to get him to
write to Mr. Bronte to invite the young ladies to tea, and offer

168 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

his escort to the lecture, and back again to the Parsonage.
Great fears were entertained that permission would not be
given — it was a walk of four miles each way. The Parsonage
was not reached till 12 p.m. The two clergymen rushed in
with their charges, deeply disturbing Miss Branwell, who had
prepared hot coffee for the home party, which of coarse fell
short when two more were to be supplied. Poor Miss Branwell
lost her temper, Charlotte was troubled, and Mr. Weightman,
who enjoyed teasing the old lady, was very thirsty. The great
spirits of the walking party had a trying suppression, but
twinkling fun sustained some of the party.

"There was also a little episode as to valentines. Mr.
Weightman discovered that none of the party had ever received
a valentine — a great discovery ! Whereupon he indited verses
to each one, and walked ten miles to post them, lest Mr. Bronte
should discover his dedicatory nonsense, and the quiet liveliness
going on under the sedate espionage of Miss Branwell and
Mr. Bronte himself. Then I recall the taking of Mr. Weight-
man's portrait by Charlotte. The sittings became alarming
for length of time required, and the guest had to adopt the
gown, which the owner was very proud to exhibit, amusing the
party with his critical remarks on the materials used, and
pointing out the adornments, silk, velvet, etc."

Evidently Ellen Nussey had enlightened Mrs. Gaskell as to
the Celia Amelia of the letters, as she puts Mr. Weightman
where Charlotte Bronte had written Celia Amelia. Mr. Bronte
managed to live on good terms with the Dissenters in Haworth,
but just about the time that Mr. Weightman came there was
a certain amount of opposition to church rates, and a stormy
meeting was held in the Parish Church room, to which the
Dissenters were invited.

This was followed by two sermons preached in the church ;
one by Mr. Weightman, " a noble, eloquent, High-church
Apostolical-Succession discourse, in which he banged the
Dissenters most fearlessly and unflinchingly," and another
sermon on the same subject, by a Mr. Collins, a neighbouring
clergyman. Charlotte Bronte's conclusion of the two sermons
shows her passion for justice. " Mais, if I were a Dissenter,

DEATH OF MR. WEIGHTMAN 169

I would have taken the first opportunity of kicking or of horse-
whipping both the gentlemen for their stern, bitter attack on
my religion and its teachers."

Mr. Weightman died during the third year of his curacy.
Charlotte and Emily Bronte were at Brussels at the time, and
Anne was at Thorpe Green ; only Bran well was at home,
and he watched by the bedside of his friend, and felt his death
keenly. The Rev. Patrick Bronte preached the funeral sermon
in Ha worth Parish Church on Sunday, 2nd October, 1842, when
the church was crowded, but only Branwell sat in the Parsonage
pew, as Aunt Branwell was ill at home.

Charlotte Bronte's letters reveal a rather frivolous young
man, and it is well to have the Vicar's opinion —

" There are many, who for a short time can please, and even
astonish — but who soon retrograde and fall into disrepute.
His character wore well ; the surest proof of real worth. He
had, it is true, some peculiar advantages. Agreeable in person
and manners, and constitutionally cheerful, his first introduc-
tion was prepossessing. But what he gained at first, he did
not lose afterwards."

Mr. Bronte visited Mr. Weightman twice a day during his
last illness, and Branwell often went to see his friend. In
one of his letters to Mr. Francis H. Grundy, he says : "I have
had a long attendance at the death-bed of the Rev. Mr.
Weightman, one of my dearest friends." A tablet was erected
to his memory in the north aisle of Haworth Old Church by
the parishioners of Haworth, by all of whom he was greatly
loved.

Mr. Bronte's published appreciation of Mr. Weightman, and
the esteem in which he was held by the whole village, go far
to correct the opinion given by Charlotte Bronte. She says,
in a letter to Ellen Nussey, "He is a thorough male flirt,"
and " He ought not to have been a parson, certainly not,"
but this may have been said in sarcasm.

In Agnes Grey, the curate whom Agnes marries is a Mr.
Weston, and he is said to have been based on William
Weightman. A poem written by Anne Bronte' is considered

170 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

to have been an expression of her feelings at the death of the
young curate, for during her lifetime, Mr. Weightman was the
only curate with whom she was closely associated. Charlotte
Bronte gives this poem the first place in the small collection of
the poems of Anne Bronte or rather Acton Bell.

" A REMINISCENCE
By ACTON BELL.
Yes, thou art gone ! and never more

Thy sunny smile shall gladden me ;
But I may pass the old church door,
And pace the floor that covers thee.

May stand upon the cold, damp stone,

And think that, frozen lies below
The lightest heart that I have known,

The kindest I shall ever know.

Yet, though I cannot see thee more,

'Tis still a comfort to have seen ;
And though thy transient life is o'er,

'Tis sweet to think that thou hast been ;

To think a soul so near divine,

Within a form so angel fair,
United to a heart like thine,

Has gladdened once our humble sphere."

In Agnes Grey, which Anne Bronte admitted was to a
great extent autobiographical, she writes —

" Shielded by my own obscurity and by the lapse of years,
and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture ; and will
candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the
most intimate friend."

CHAPTER XIII

ANNE BRONTE

SCANT notice by Biographers — Her Education at home — Her character
— Agnes Grey — Charlotte's solicitude for Anne — Her difficulties as
governess at Blake Hall — She obtains a situation as governess at
Thorpe Green — Branwell Bronte a tutor in the same family-
Anne leaves Thorpe Green — Wildfell Hall — Branwell's dismissal.

OF the three sisters, the youngest, Anne, has received very
little notice ; there is no biography of her, and she is simply
the sister of Charlotte and Emily Bronte. Even the ne'er-
do-well Branwell has had his life story related by Mr. Francis
Leyland, but no one has ever thought it worth while to chronicle
the doings of this gentle little sister, and yet she is a character
well worth studying, and, if her genius cannot rank with that
of her more famous sisters, she was, as Charlotte Bronte said
of her, ", genuinely good and truly great."

Anne Bronte', born on 17th January, 1820, at Thornton,
was the youngest child of Patrick Bronte, and her mother
lived only a year and eight months after her birth. In conse-
quence, the baby was in the charge of servants and the older
sisters for almost a year. When Aunt Branwell came to tend
the little flock, it was Anne that she was most attached to,
and the little one looked upon her as a mother. Anne was more
like the Branwells than the Brontes, and in this respect she
differed from her two sisters. With the exception of a short
period of less than three months, she never attended any,
school, but was educated entirely by her father, her aunt and
her sister Charlotte. To have retained her last appointment
at Thorpe Green for four years was no small testimony to her
ability as a governess, and to her home training. Her pupils
loved her, and in after years came to see her, and were wonder-
fully attached to her. There is no record that either Charlotte
or Emily kindled such kindly feeling in the hearts of their
pupils.

All the people at the Vicarage were very fond of this quaint
little child. Nancy Garrs used to tell that once, when Anne

171

172 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

was a baby, Charlotte rushed into her father's study to say
that there was an angel standing by Anne's cradle, but when
they returned, it was gone, though Charlotte was sure she had
seen it.

Every effort was made to keep this " darling of the home,"
as one of the old servants called her, from going out as gover-
ness, but at nineteen Anne was determined not to be dependent
upon others, but to earn her own living. She was not domesti-
cated like the other sisters, for the simple reason that her
services in the household were not required. She had a
pleasant voice, and could both play and sing. Like her sisters,
she revelled in books, and knew how to choose them. Her
father taught her English subjects, Latin and Scripture, and
Charlotte was responsible for her German and French.

Anne Bronte was determined not to be a burden at home,
although, like the others, she loved the home life dearly, but
she had the family love of adventure, and wished to see the
world that lay beyond the Haworth Hills.

The Rev. Patrick Bronte has been accused of driving his
girls from home to be governesses, but it is evident that he
did not wish his youngest child to leave home according to
Anne Bronte's account in Agnes Grey.

" ' What, my little Agnes a governess ! ' cried he, and, in
spite of his dejection, he laughed at the idea.

" ' Yes, papa, don't you say anything against it : I should
like it so much, and I am sure I could manage delightfully.'

" ' But, my darling, we could not spare you.'

Charlotte Bronte, writing to Ellen Nussey at this time,
says —

"April 15, 1839.

" I could not write to you in the week you requested, as
about that time we were very busy in preparing for Anne's
departure. Poor child ! she left us last Monday ; no one went
with her ; it was her own wish that she might be allowed to go
alone, as she thought she could manage better and summon
more courage if thrown entirely upon her own resources.
We have had one letter from her since she went. She expresses

ANNE BRONTE AND BLAKE HALL 173

herself very well satisfied, and says that Mrs. Ingham is ex-
tremely kind ; the two eldest children alone are under her
care, the rest are confined to the nursery, with which and its
occupants she has nothing to do. ... I hope she'll do. You
would be astonished what a sensible, clever letter she writes ;
it is only the talking part that I fear. But I do seriously
apprehend that Mrs. Ingham will sometimes conclude that she
has a natural impediment in her speech."

Anne gives the account of becoming a governess in the first
chapter of Agnes Grey.

The Mary of this story is undoubtedly Emily Bronte. Anne
and Emily were devoted to each other, whilst Charlotte acted
the part of mother, rather than sister.

The picture of the youngest member of the family going out
to earn her own living is given in Anne's characteristic way ;
she was openly more religious than the other members of the
family. It is possible that Aunt Branwell had taught her some
of the Methodist doctrines, which she brought from her
Methodist home in Penzance.

In the chapter of Agnes Grey, headed " First Lessons in the
Art of Instruction," Anne gives a carefully detailed account
of her trials at Blake Hall, and yet, unlike Charlotte, she sent
a cheering letter home after her arrival, but later she told her
sisters of her trials as a governess. Emily sent a message of hope
to Anne/Jand Charlotte told Ellen Nussey that she could never
bear the worries of the life of a governess such as Anne was
experiencing.

Charlotte, ever solicitous for Anne, for whose sake she had
once and only once quarrelled with Miss Wooler, wrote to
Ellen Nussey —

" I have one aching feeling at my heart (I must allude to it,
though I had resolved not to). It is about Anne ; she has so
much to endure ; far, far more than I ever had. When my
thoughts turn to her, they always see her as a patient, per-
secuted stranger. I know what concealed susceptibility is
in her nature, when her feelings are wounded. I wish I could
be with her to administer a little balm. She is more lonely —

174 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

less gifted with the power of making friends, even than I am.
' Drop the subject.' "

Anne's reign as governess at Blake Hall was over in a year.
In the earlier chapters of Agnes Grey she gives an appalling
account of the life of a governess in a wealthy family where
the children were badly trained.

Though it is well known that Mrs. Gaskell, after the publica-
tion of her Life of Charlotte Bronte, received many letters con-
cerning people identified in her book, the account of Anne
Bronte's hardships at Blake Hall was kept in all the editions.
To make it look not quite so black against the employers of
the Brontes Mrs. Gaskell gives, by way of explanation, the
sisters' want of tact in managing children. There is no doubt
that Anne Bronte deserved sympathy, but the mistake from
the first was that, in the days of the Brontes, girls were sup-
posed to know how to teach without receiving any training
of any sort.

After her holidays, Anne returned to Blake Hall and the
naughty little children.

" I returned, however, with unabated vigour to my work —
a moie arduous task than anyone can imagine." Then she
tells of hard, stubborn fights with the children, and of her
greater troubles with their parents, who could see nothing
wrong, but found fault continually with the governess.

At a later period, when Agnes Grey had been reviewed, and
some had complained of the extravagant colouring of certain
parts, Anne Bronte replied that those scenes " were carefully
copied from the life, with a most scrupulous avoidance of all
exaggeration." With characteristic truthfulness, she tells
of her dismissal by Mrs. Bloomfield [Mrs. Ingham] who attri-
buted the backwardness of the pupils to " the want of sufficient
firmness and diligent persevering care " on the part of the
governess. The meek way in which Anne Bronte submitted
" like a self -convicted culprit " and returned to her home
' * vexed, harassed and disappointed," shows how difficult her
life as a governess had really been, and yet how determinedly
this frail girl decided to go out again as a teacher. The
three sisters seem to have been troubled by their father's

FEARS OF POVERTY 175

ill-health, and the thought of being left alone to struggle with
the world appears to have spurred both Charlotte and Anne
to seek a situation, with the idea of earning their own living,
and gaining experience which would, at a later stage, enable
them to start a school of their own.
Just about this time Charlotte writes —

" No further steps have been taken about the project [start-
ing a school of their own] I mentioned to you, nor probably
will be for the present ; but Emily, and Anne, and I keep it
in view. It is our pole star, and we look to it in all
circumstances of despondency."

In Jane Eyre, Villette, The Professor and Agnes Grey, the
heroine looks forward to having a little school of her own, and
in each case this is referred to as a haven of peace. The night-
mare of poverty never seemed to leave Anne and Charlotte
in those days, and after remaining at home a little more than
a year Anne determined to try her luck again as a governess.
Like Charlotte, she was tired of answering advertisements, and
decided to advertise for a situation, giving her qualifications.

Her next appointment was in the home of a clergyman, the
Rev. Edmund Robinson, of Thorpe Green, Little Ouseburn,
near York. Here she seems to have had a better time than
at Blake Hall, and the fact that she stayed there for nearly
four years proves that her services were appreciated. After
she had been at Thorpe Green Vicarage for about a year
and a half, her brother Branwell was engaged as tutor in
the same family, and, in spite of the fact that he had ultimately
to leave in disgrace, he kept his appointment for two and a
half years. He did not live at the Vicarage like Anne, but he
lodged at a farm a short distance away.

Anne speaks of him as having " much ill-health and tribula-
tion " whilst at Thorpe Green, and she does not appear to have
known of his duplicity until all was over. She had charge
of the girls in the family, whilst Branwell was tutor to the
only son. Both Mrs. Robinson and her daughters were quite
smart society people, and very different from their little
Puritan governess ; balls, parties, and flirtations occupied

176 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

much of the time of the girls in the home. Both the mother
and her daughters were quite a worldly set, and one who knew
them personally said that the account which Mrs. Gaskell
gave was not so far wrong as many were given to understand,
and that Branwell was badly treated by those who ought to
have known better. Both Anne and Charlotte always believed
Branwell had been deceived and made sport of to such an
extent that he became quite crazy. Although Anne was
able to carry out her duties satisfactorily, the Thorpe Green
Vicarage was never the place for Branwell. His presence
might be a source of fun for Mrs. Robinson, but it meant
disaster to him, and certainly unhinged his brain.

Mrs. Gaskell was blamed for relating such an unpleasant
story about Mrs. Robinson, and in order to avoid an action
for libel she had to publish an apology in The Times. So
certain, however, was she that she had told the truth that she
refused to interfere with the account in the third edition, but
she confessed in later years that it was altered by her husband,
who was much concerned about the matter.

Mrs. Gaskell believed Charlotte Bronte, for she had seen
her letter to Ellen Nussey, in which she wrote of Mrs. Robinson
" as a hopeless being, calculated to bring a curse wherever she
goes." That letter has since been published and is sufficient
to explain Mrs. Gaskell's indignation.

Mrs. Gaskell was mistaken when she blamed Branwell
Bronte for being the cause of anxiety to his sister Charlotte
during her second year at Brussels, for Charlotte herself writes
to say " Anne and Branwell are wondrously valued in their
situations," and Branwell stayed on at Thorpe Green for a year
and a half after Charlotte Bronte returned to Haworth, so
that he had nothing to do with her return home.

Anne Bronte's second novel, Wildfell Hall, has almost
escaped notice. That Agnes Grey should have been accepted
by any firm of publishers and The Professor refused is a mystery,
for Agnes Grey is quite a colourless story, told in a very school-
girl fashion, and Anne Bronte brings in her scripture references
frequently, giving the novel a very didactic tone, and conveying
the impression that it was written by a much older person.

WILDFELL HALL

177

Anne meant to write a story with a purpose, and she was not
afraid to point the moral. n

Wildfell Hall was a didactic temperance novel, and had it
not been that Jane Eyre had made the name of Bronte famous,
it is questionable if the publishers would have accepted it
so readily.

13 — (aaoo)

CHAPTER XIV
1841

RAWDON, (MARCH TO DECEMBER)

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S limited range of accomplishments — Her ex-
perience at Rawdon — Advice from her employers — The village of
Rawdon — Charlotte Bronte's lack of interest in children — The
project of a BrontS school — Letter from Mary Taylor — Proposal
that Charlotte and Emily Bronte should enter a school at Brussels —
The Heger Pensionnat at Brussels.

IN March, 1841, Charlotte was successful in obtaining an
appointment —

" I told you some time since, that I meant to get a situation,
and when I said so my resolution was quite fixed. I felt that,
however often I was disappointed, I had no intention of
relinquishing my efforts. After being severely baffled two or
three times — after a world of trouble, in the way of corre-
spondence and interviews — I have at length succeeded, and
am fairly established in my new place."

The appointment to which she refers was with a Mr. and Mrs.
White, of Upperwood House, Rawdon. Mr. White, a York-
shire manufacturer was said to be interested in literature, and
Charlotte Bronte was more comfortable at Rawdon than she
had been elsewhere.

Rawdon has received very scant notice from the biographers
of Charlotte Bronte, and yet it proved to be the turning-point
in her life. It was owing to her stay at Rawdon that both
she and Emily decided to continue their education by becoming
pupils in a school at Brussels. The step was taken owing to
the kindly interest and wise counsel of Charlotte's employers,
whilst she was governess in the home of Mr. and Mrs. John
White, which is less than two miles from Woodhouse Grove
School, Apperley Bridge, where her father and mother first
met nearly thirty years before. The year previous to this
visit to Rawdon had been an " outwardly eventless year."

178

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AT RAWDON 179

Though Charlotte had been happy, her conscience would not
let her stay quietly at home, adding nothing to the family
income, but rather taking from it. Emily, who was always con-
sidered the more domesticated of the sisters, was also at home,
and Charlotte set herself the uncongenial task of answering the
advertisements of people in want of a governess for their
children. Her limited range of accomplishments and quali-
fications prevented her from obtaining a first-class appoint-
ment ; she knew little of foreign languages, and less of music,
but she had a good knowledge of English literature : had some
taste for drawing : and was an excellent needlewoman —
qualifications which proved very serviceable to her.

She has sometimes been pictured at this time as a morbid,
melancholy creature, but a letter written to Ellen Nussey, just
before she obtained the appointment at Rawdon, proves how
inaccurate such a description was. When she was happy, she
had more than the average share of animal spirits —

" ' The wind bloweth where it listeth. Thou hearest the
id thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither
goeth.' That, I believe, is Scripture, though in what chapter
book, or whether it be correctly quoted, I can't possibly say.
[owever, it behoves me to write a letter to a young woman of
the name of E., with whom I was once acquainted, * in life's
lorning march, when my spirit was young.' This young
foman wished me to write to her some time since, though I
ive nothing to say — I e'en put it off, day by day, till at last,
fearing that she will * curse me by her gods,' I feel constrained
to sit down and tack a few lines together, which she may call a
itter or not, as she pleases. Now, if the young woman expects
ise in this production, she will find herself miserably dis-
ippointed. I shall dress her a dish of salmagundi — I shall cook
hash — compound a stew — toss up an omelette soufflee d la
franfaise, and send it her with my respects. The wind,
which is very high up in our hills of Judea, though, I suppose,
down in the Philistine flats of B. parish it is nothing to speak
of, has produced the same effects on the contents of my
knowledge-box that a quaigh of usquebaugh does upon those
of most other bipeds. I see everything couleur de rose, and

180 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

am strongly inclined to dance a jig, if I knew how. I think
I must partake of the nature of a pig or an ass — both which
animals are strongly affected by a high wind. From what
quarter the wind blows I cannot tell, for I never could in my
life ; but I should very much like to know how the great
brewing-tub of Bridlington Bay works, and what sort of
yeasty froth rises just now on the waves.

" A woman of the name of Mrs. B., it seems, wants a teacher.
I wish she would have me ; and I have written to Miss W. to
teU her so."

The Mrs. B. referred to was a Mrs. Thomas Brooke, of
Huddersfield. In a letter dated 12th November, 1840, Charlotte
Bronte tells of exchanging letters with Mrs. B. and how she
expresses herself as pleased with the candour of her applica-
tion for the post of governess. Charlotte had taken care to
tell her that if she wanted " a showy, elegant, fashionable
personage — she was not the man for her." But as Mrs. Brooke
required a governess capable of teaching music, including
singing, Charlotte Bronte was not eligible.

After failing to obtain this appointment at Huddersfield,
Charlotte Bronte took the initiative, and began" to advertise
for a post as governess. It would be interesting to find these
advertisements. Her advent to Rawdon was in consequence
of her own advertisement, which no doubt would be modest
enough.

At this time she was a woman of nearly twenty-six, and
though she felt the need of earning money, she was careful not
to estimate too highly the mere salary offered ; she preferred
comfort and kindly disposed people to a large salary. She
appears to have had an opportunity of going to Ireland as
governess about the time she accepted the post at Rawdon,
and she offered " the Irish concern " to Mary Taylor, who also
declined it. Charlotte Bronte always had a longing to see
her father's native place, which was not gratified until fourteen
years later.

It was early in March, 1841, that she went to Rawdon, and
in one of her letters she praises the house and grounds, but
does not say anything about the appointment itself ; her

TIMELY ADVICE 181

experience at Rawdon was much pleasanter than the time
she spent at Stonegappe.

She says, " The house is not very large, but exceedingly
comfortable." Her employers proved to be wise friends, and
their timely advice helped to guide her in what proved to be
the great turning-point in her life. Had they not encouraged
her to go abroad and gain a knowledge of foreign languages,
thus fitting herself to become a competent teacher, it is very
doubtful if she would have gone to Brussels. It was Mr. and
Mrs. White's support that carried weight with Mr. Bronte and
Miss Bran well, for the " heartening on " of Mary Taylor might
not have been sufficient to induce Patrick Bronte to agree to
the scheme by which his daughters entered a continental
school. " Mary's price is above rubies," said Charlotte Bronte
at this time, and there is no doubt that Mary Taylor did all
she could to get Mr. Bronte's daughters to Brussels.

Not only would Charlotte and Emily Bronte have missed
the chance of seeing foreign places, but we should never have
had Charlotte's great novel, Villette, nor her first and oft-
rejected novel The Professor. Nor would Wuthering Heights,
Jane Eyre and Shirley have been produced, for M. Heger's
great personality was an inspiration. Previous to the visit to
Brussels, the writing by the two sisters was quite mediocre,
and did not show sufficient promise to warrant publication at
a later stage. Some of Charlotte's unpublished and unfinished
stories do not by any means give great indication of genius.
It is to the honour of M. Heger that the great Bronte
lovelists were the two members of the Bronte family who came
ider his influence. If Branwell and Anne could have had
year or two under M. Heger, he might have left his mark upon
them. If anyone could have given Branwell " balance," it
ras M. Heger ; Anne would have acquired more confidence,
id the wider outlook would have broadened her views, and
given her a larger scope for her novels. Neither Branwell nor
Anne had any training as teachers, and, as they lacked aptitude,
the wonder is that they met with any success whatever in
teaching. Their experience of life was also too limited, and it
is scarcely a matter for wonder that Branwell went to " The

182 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Black Bull " for some diversion. When Charlotte and Emily
visited Brussels, they entered a new and larger world ; their
active imagination was now turned into other channels,
unknown to their quiet, uneventful lives at Haworth.

Rawdon is still a delightful district, being now quite a suburb
of Leeds. Upperwood House has been demolished, and one
more Bronte landmark has passed into oblivion. The village
stands on high ground, and is very healthy. The place suited
Charlotte Bronte, who was very well during her stay there,
and was able to do a great amount of work. This is seen by her
high-spirited letters and her self-assertion ; she not only had
the courage to ask for a day's holiday in order to visit Birstall,
but, when a week was offered for her summer's vacation, she
boldly claimed three, and won the day. Her experience at
Stonegappe and Roe Head had taught her to " fend for
herself," as Yorkshire people say. She had an additional
claim as she had taken charge of the household during the time
that Mr. and Mrs. White were absent on their holidays.

Rawdon is chiefly employed in the manufacture of wool,
but its trade is not so extensive as it once was. It is proud
of the honour of manufacturing the first batch of wool brought
by the Rev. Samuel Marsden, a native of Farsley near by,
from Botany Bay, Australia, in 1809.

Rawdon to-day is worthy of a visit ; fine villas are dotted
here and there on the sunny slopes, and from the top of the
Billing Hill an extensive view of the surrounding country is
obtained. It is possible on a clear day to see the spires of no
fewer than twenty-three churches, and on a clear moonlight
night the view is equally beautiful. In the distance are to be
seen the Pennines, and, on a very clear day, York Minster,
thirty miles away, is visible.

The district abounds in delightful walks to such places as
Calverley, Apperley Bridge, Guiseley and the more distant
and beautiful Kirkstall Abbey. All these places were visited
by Charlotte Bronte's mother and father before their marriage,
as Maria BranwelPs letters prove, but, judging from Charlotte
Bronte's letters, she seems to have had little time for expedi-
tions, being kept busy with the children and with needlework.

LACK OF LOVE FOR CHILDREN 183

Some five or six years later, William Edward Forster lived
at Lane Head, Rawdon, and there Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle visited
him in 1847. Sir Wemyss Reid, in his Life of W. E. Forster,
tells of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle being thrown out of the dog-cart
when Forster was driving. Charlotte Bronte appears to have
met very few people at Rawdon, and, as in the case of most
governesses in those days, all her time was claimed by her
employers. Mr. Strickland Halsteads, of Hastings, writing
to the Westminster Gazette in May, 1901, says —

" My mother, now in her seventy-ninth year, distinctly
remembers meeting the afterwards distinguished authoress
at the house of Mr. White, a Bradford merchant, something
like sixty years ago. At that time Miss Bronte was acting as
governess to Mr. White's children, and my mother has a vivid
recollection of seeing her sitting apart from the rest of the
family in a corner of the room, poring, in her short-sighted way,
over a book. The impression she made on my mother was that
of a shy, nervous girl, ill at ease, who desired to escape notice
and to avoid taking part in the general conversation."

Charlotte Bronte describes her pupils as being " wild and
unbroken," and with reference to her duties she says : " How
utterly averse my whole mind and nature are to the employ-
ment." She clearly had no love for children, and it was the
lack of this sympathy which made her task so distasteful. In
a recent publication on the Brontes, Miss May Sinclair strives
hard to convince her readers that Charlotte Bronte was pas-
sionately fond of children, and she sarcastically dismisses the
view of Mr. Augustine Birrell, Mr. Swinburne and Mr. George
Henry Lewes that Charlotte Bronte had no love for children
and failed to portray child life in her novels. It is strange that
Miss Sinclair does not quote Mrs. Gaskell on the subject ; she
not only had a personal knowledge of Charlotte Bronte, but
had also discussed children and children's little ways with
her, and fortanately she has given us her own views on this
question. She attributes Charlotte Bronte's lack of interest
in children to the fact that the little Brontes had no real
childhood, nor had they experienced a mother's love. This

184 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

would seem to show that Miss Bran well, capable housekeeper
though she may have been, failed to gain the real affection
of those in her charge, for Mrs. Gaskell herself lost her mother
when only a year old, and, like the young Brontes, she was
brought up by one of her mother's sisters, and yet she never
had to complain of the lack of parental love. The fact was,
the Brontes were brought up by a maiden lady, whilst the aunt
in Mrs. Gaskell's case had a daughter of her own, and was a
most lovable woman.

What Charlotte Bronte said of her charges — children of six
and eight years of age — and of her distaste for teaching, proves
that she had no affection for children, nor interest in associating
with them. She hated teaching, and came perilously near
hating children, unless they were well-mannered, pretty, and
naturally affectionate like Mrs. Gaskell's own little daughters.

Charlotte Bronte speaks of her feeling towards children
whom she likes, and not of children in general, and instead
of saying she loves their little ways she says, " Their ways are
all matter of half-admiring, half-puzzled speculation," which
proves that she had been analysing their feelings, instead of
spontaneously returning their love as it was given. This is
shown by a little incident which Mrs. Gaskell relates —

" Once when I told Julia to take and show her the way to
some room in the house, Miss Bronte shrunk backer ' Do not
bid her do anything for me,' she said ; ' it has been so sweet
hitherto to have her rendering her little kindnesses
spontaneously.' '

This is evidence that Charlotte Bronte suspected that the
child had been told to be kind to her. She had little faith in
the natural love of a little child ; but no wonder when we
remember her own childhood.

Her Sunday School scholars at Haworth were very proud of
her when she became known as a distinguished author, but
they all admitted that in her early days, and even later, she
was very strict, and the children in the day school, who had
to submit their specimens of needlework to her, when she paid
her surprise visits to the school, remembered with regret
how severe she could be if the back-stitching was not perfect.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AS A TEACHER 185

" Three threads for each stitch " was Miss Bronte's rule, they
told me, and the mistress who was responsible for the needle-
work in the Haworth Church School was very nervous as to
the results of Miss Bronte's visit. One of these very pupils,
visiting Haworth a few years ago, and standing at Charlotte
Bronte's grave, testified to the fear of the children when Miss
Bronte came to school to examine the sewing and knitting.
As Mrs. Gaskell says, all this severity was the result of having
no mother, a strict father, and an aunt who was lacking in
affection for children. Tabitha Brown once remarked to me —

" You know Miss Branwell was a real, old tyke. She made
the girls work at their sewing, and what with their father's
strictness over their lessons, and the hours they devoted to
needlework, they had little time for themselves until after
nine o'clock at night, and that was when they got time for
their writing." Mary Taylor confirms this in one of her letters.

This severity, however, was helpful to the girls afterwards.
Emily was the least efficient at needlework ; she had no
patience for such a task, and she did not " finish off " neatly
as Charlotte and Anne did. Specimens of needlework done by
Charlotte and Emily, in the writer's possession, prove this.

It was at Rawdon that Charlotte Bronte' had to act as
nurse during the Spring cleaning, and she tells us " She sus-
pected herself of getting rather fond of the baby." This is
not the language of a woman of twenty-six, who was passion-
ately fond of a young child committed to her temporary charge.

The fact is, she lacked patience in dealing with children,
and she was deficient in the saving grace of humour, when she
had charge of children. When she visited Thackeray at his
home in Young Street, she thought his little girls were very
forward because they chatted naturally rather than waited
until they were spoken to, and the girls did not take kindly
to the little Jane Eyre as they called her. Take the incident
where Adele is allowed to accompany Rochester and Jane
Eyre in the conveyance. Would any woman who had ordinary
interest in v. young girl's welfare have allowed her to take
part in the conversation between Rochester and Jane Eyre ?

186 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

The motherly feeling for a child was entirely absent, and
it showed how Charlotte Bronte failed to grasp the true
relations which should exist between a young girl and her
elders on such subjects of conversation. Then there was
Georgette in Villette, to say nothing of Polly. But, says
one critic, Mr. Swinburne had forgotten Georgette. Not at
all ! Georgette was not a creation by Charlotte Bronte ;
she was a character taken from life, and represented Louise
Heger, the second child of Madame Heger, and Polly was a
character unlike any other child, unless it be Paul Dombey,
to whom Charlotte Bronte probably owes something, though
she need not have gone further than the Haworth parsonage,
where the children were almost as quaint as Polly. In addi-
tion, there is the letter from Charlotte Bronte to Miss Wooler,
about the disappointing trip to Scotland with Mr. and Mrs.
Taylor and the baby, " that rather despotic member of modern
households," as Charlotte Bronte says. The whole letter seems
to show that she thought that too much fuss was being made of
the baby, although she says, "had any evil consequences
followed a prolonged stay, I would never have forgiven myself."
She, however, is careful to say that she considered the ailment
trivial and temporary, and she left " bonnie Scotland " with
reluctance.

After Charlotte Bronte had been at Upperwood House for a
few months, Miss Wooler, her old schoolmistress, offered her the
goodwill of Heald's House School, which had been in charge of
Miss Wooler's sister, but had " got into a consumptive state," to
quote Charlotte Bronte's letter. At this time the three
Bronte girls had no outlook in life other than that of being
teachers, unless they married, the probability of which seemed
very remote, as no offer which Charlotte had was accepted,
and Emily and Anne seemed destined not to marry. The
question of the three girls starting a school had been discussed
for some time : Charlotte was anxious to try the East Riding,
in the neighbourhood of Bridlington, but no place could be
definitely fixed upon, and, as they were unknown in that part
of Yorkshire, they were afraid to venture. Anne, the youngest
of the sisters, was very delicate, and was then in the employ

MISS BRANWELL AND THE SCHOOL PROJECT 187

of the Rev. Edmund Robinson as governess. She found
teaching even more trying than had been the case with Charlotte,
who, in consequence, was anxious to get a school where the
three sisters could live together, and where Anne might, as
far as possible, be relieved of any anxiety. Writing in July,
1841, to Ellen Nussey, Charlotte says —

" There is a project hatching in this house, which both
Emily and I anxiously wished to discuss with you. The project
is yet in its infancy, hardly peeping from its shell ; and whether
it will ever come out a fine full-fledged chicken, or will turn
addle, and die before it cheeps, is one of those considerations
that are but dimly revealed by the oracles of futurity. Now,
don't be nonplussed by all this metaphorical mystery. I talk
of a plain and every-day occurrence, though, in Delphic style,
I wrap up the information in figures of speech concerning eggs,
chickens, etcsetera, etcseterorum. To come to the point :
papa and aunt talk, by fits and starts, of our — id est, Emily,
Anne, and myself — commencing a school ! I have often, you
know, said how much I wished such a thing ; but I never could
conceive where the capital was to come from for making such
a speculation. I was well aware, indeed, that aunt had money,
but I always considered that she was the last person who
would offer a loan for the purpose in question. A loan, how-
ever, she has offered, or rather intimates that she perhaps will
offer in case pupils can be secured, an eligible situation obtained,
&c. This sounds very fair, but still there are matters to be
considered which throw something of a damp upon the scheme.
I do not expect that aunt will sink more than £150 in such a
venture ; and would it be possible to establish a respectable
(not by any means a showy) school, and to commence house-
keeping with a capital of only that amount ? Propound the
question to your sister, if you think she can answer it ; if not,
don't say a word on the subject."

Whilst this project was being discussed, Charlotte received
a letter from Mary Taylor, who was finishing her education
with her sister Martha, at Brussels. " Mary's letter spoke
of some of the pictures and cathedrals she had seen — pictures

188 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

the most exquisite, cathedrals the most venerable." Ste.
Gudule's and other churches, and some of the pictures which
Mary Taylor described can still be seen in Brussels. " I
hardly knew what swelled in my throat as I read her letter,"
said Charlotte, " such a vehement impatience of restraint
and steady work ; such a strong wish for wings — wings such
as wealth can furnish ; such an urgent thirst tp see, to know,
to learn ; something internal seemed to expand bodily for a
minute. I was tantalised by the consciousness of faculties
unexercised — then all collapsed and I despaired."

It was well that Miss Wooler did not come to terms with
Charlotte Bronte, for in that case the £100 which Miss Branwell
offered to lend would probably have been used to purchase
the goodwill of Heald's House. Apart from the possibility
of the venture being unsuccessful, Dewsbury might not have
been fortunate from a health standpoint, and it was well that
the suggestion was not carried out. Moreover, Miss Wooler's
offer extended only to Charlotte ; she would not have Emily
or Anne for the first half-year, and Charlotte was the only
one whom Miss Wooler thought capable of making a teacher.

It was whilst at Rawdon that Charlotte proved herself a
clever diplomatist, by writing a well thought-out letter to
her aunt asking for a loan of money to enable her and Emily
to go to Brussels —

"I would not go to France or to Paris. I would go to
Brussels, in Belgium. The cost of the journey there, at the
dearest rate of travelling, would be £5 ; living is there little
more than half as dear as it is in England, and the facilities for
education are equal or superior to any other place in Europe.
In half a year, I could acquire a thorough familiarity with
French. I could improve greatly in Italian, and even get a
dash of German ; i.e., providing my health continued as good
as it is now. Mary is now staying at Brussels, at a first-rate

establishment there I feel certain, while I am writing, that

you will see the propriety of what I say. You always like to
use your money to the best advantage. You are not fond of
making shabby purchases ; when you do confer a favour, it is
often done in style ; and, depend upon it, £50 or £100, thus laid

THE BELGIAN SCHOOL SCHEME 189

out would be well employed. Of course, I know no other
friend in the world to whom I could apply on this subject,
except yourself. I feel an absolute conviction that, if this
advantage were allowed us, it would be the making of us for
life. Papa will, perhaps, think it a wild and ambitious scheme ;
but who ever rose in the world without ambition ? When
he left Ireland to go to Cambridge University, he was as ambi-
tious as I am now. I want us all to get on. I know we have
talents, and I want them to be turned to account. I look to
you, aunt, to help us. I think you will not refuse. I know,
if you consent, it shall not be my fault if you ever repent your
kindness."

The masterful way in which Charlotte Bronte managed
everything is to her credit. Although she only asked for six
months in Brussels, she made up her mind that she and Emily
should stay for a year, earning sufficient in the second half
to pay their expenses, if possible.

It is clear that the father and aunt both worked under
Charlotte's direction, and Emily seems to have acquiesced
in all that Charlotte suggested. The hot haste in which she
made her preparations showed how she was fretting under the
restraint. " Brussels is still my promised land, but there is
still the wilderness of time and space to cross before I reach it."

When the Brussels plan was all but settled, Mr. Bronte
heard an unfavourable account of the Belgian schools, and it
was hastily decided that Charlotte and Emily should go to
Lille, probably to a French Protestant school highly recom-
mended by the Rev. Baptist Noel and by other clergymen.
Mrs. Gaskell was unable to discuss the reasons for a sudden
change of plan, but Charlotte Bronte was extremely anxious
to go to Brussels and she ultimately prevailed.

It appears there was an English lady who had been a
governess in the family of Louis Philippe, and when his
daughter Marie Louise married Leopold I, King of the Belgians,
the lady accompanied her to Brussels in the capacity of reader.
This lady's grand-daughter was being educated at the Pen-
sionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle, and so satisfied was the grand-
mother with the education given that she recommended the

190 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

school to the wife of Mr. Jenkins, the English chaplain in
Brussels. Mr. Jenkins' brother was a clergyman in the West
Riding, and through him the recommendation was passed to
Mr. Bronte, and it was decided that, if the terms suited,
Charlotte and Emily should proceed to Brussels. M. Heger,
who had known what it meant to be poor in his younger days,
was so much struck with the simple and earnest tone of the
letter that he suggested to his wife that very generous and easy
terms should be named, and an inclusive amount was fixed.

When Mrs. Gaskell visited Brussels in 1856, she interviewed
M. Heger, who told her that it was Charlotte Bronte's letter
which led his wife and himself to take the two Brontes as
pupils, for Charlotte made very particular enquiries with regard
to the possible " extras," and he and Madame Heger were so
struck by the simple, earnest tone of the letter, that one
remarked to the other : " These are the daughters* of an
English pastor, of moderate means, anxious to learn with an
ulterior view of instructing others, and to whom the risk of
additional expense is of great consequence. Let us name a
specific sum, within which all expenses shall be included."
These terms were accepted, but whether they exactly
corresponded to the school prospectus is not mentioned.

MAISON D EDUCATION

|Jaur les \emus Demoiselles ,

Sous la direction

cR/uo T&o^eflly, 3», a

Cet etablissement est situe dans Fendroit le plus salubre de la ville.

Le cours d' instruction, base sur la Religion, comprend essentiellement la Lanyue Francaise,
I'Histoire, I'Arithmetique, la Geographic, I'fccriture, ainsique tons let ouvrages a I' aiguille
que doit connaitre une demoiselle bien elevee.

La sante des e'leves est I'objet d'une surveillance active les parents peuvent se reposeravec
securite sur les mesures qui ont ete prises a cet e'gard dans I' etablissement

Leprix de la pension estde 650 francs, celui.de la demi-pension est de 350/rawc*, payables
par quartiers et d'avance II n'y a d'autres frais accessoires, que les etrennes des domes
tiques

II n est fait aucune deduction pour le temps que les e'leves passent chez elles dans le
courant de I'annee. Le nombre des e'leves etant limite, les parents qui desireraient reprendre
leurs enfants, sont tenus d'en prevenir la directrice trois mots d'avance.

Les lepons de musique, de langues etrangeres, etc., etc., sont au compte des parents

Le costume des pensionnaires est uniforme.

La directrice s 'engage a repondre a toutes les demandes qui pourraient lui etre adresse'es
par les parents, relativement aux autres details de son institution

Lit complet, bassm. aiguiere et draps de lit
Serviettes de table
Une malle fermant a clef.
Un convert d'argent
Un gobelet.

Si les Sieves ne sont pas de Bruxelles. on leur fournira un lit garni moyennant 34 francs
par an

lapr.moric <U I N'cnl,

CHAPTER XV

LONDON

1842-1848

LONDON, the Brontes' " Promised Land " — Mr. Bronte" accompanies
Charlotte and Emily to Brussels — Their stay in London — The
Chapter Coffee House — References in The Professor and Villette
to the journey to Brussels.

LONG before Brussels had been thought of, London had
loomed large in the imagination of the Brontes ; it was their
first Promised Land, especially for the only brother. Sir
Wemyss Reid in his monograph on Charlotte Bronte tells the
story of Charlotte, when a girl of four, wandering away from
home to find Bradford, which she thought must be a heaven
compared with Haworth, and how the nurse found her near
Bridgehouse, at the lower end of the village, crying because
she thought Bradford was too far away. The vivid imagina-
tion of the Bronte children took them to places they had
heard or read about, far away from home. Chailotte and
Bran well especially seemed to have cherished a wish, early in
life, to gaze upon other scenes than their moorland environ-
ment supplied, and London in imagination was their Mecca —
their El Dorado.

When Ellen Nussey first visited London in 1834, Charlotte
Bronte was wildly excited, and not a little inquisitive. In
replying to a letter she takes her friend to task for not
appreciating the great capital —

" I was greatly amused at the tone of nonchalance, which
you assumed, while treating of London and its wonders. Did
you not feel awed while gazing at St. Paul's and Westminster
Abbey ? Had you no feeling of intense and ardent interest,
when in St. James's you saw the palace where so many of
England's kings have held their courts, and beheld the repre-
sentations of their persons on the walls ? You should not be
too much afraid of appearing country-bred ; the magnificence
of London has drawn exclamations of astonishment from

191

192 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

travelled men, experienced in the world, its wonders and
beauties. Have you yet seen anything of the great personages
whom the sitting of Parliament now detains in London —
the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, Earl Grey, Mr.
Stanley, Mr. O'Connell ? If I were you, I would not be too
anxious to spend my time in reading whilst in town. Make
use of your own eyes for the purposes of observation now, and,
for a time at least, lay aside the spectacles with which authors
would furnish us."

In a postscript she adds —

" Will you be kind enough to inform me of the number of
performers in the King's military band ? "

This postscript was sent at the suggestion of her brother,
who was hoping to visit London later ; he was greatly interested
in Ellen Nussey's letters from the metropolis. Mrs. Gaskell
did not give the whole of the postscript, which concludes :
" Branwell very much wishes to know."

The efforts of the Brontes had long been directed to London
as the destination of Branwell, who was sent there to study
painting. Mrs. Gaskell had the impression that Branwell
Bronte' never visited London, and Ellen Nussey evidently
had the same impression, but as early as 1835, when Branwell
was only eighteen, he wrote to the Secretary of the Royal
Academy for information concerning the best means of obtain-
ing admission, and at a later period he certainly went to
London and studied painting. On 5th July, 1835, Charlotte
Bronte' wrote : " We are all about to divide, break up, separate.
Emily is going to school, Branwell is going to London, and I
am going to be a governess."

Branwell was the first member of the family ^to see the
" Great Babylon," but it proved too much for him ; he fre-
quented the public-houses, amongst them the Castle Tavern in
Holborn, then kept by Tom Spring, a well-known prize fighter.
He was not twenty years of age, and before he really reached
the City he had fallen a prey to " sharpers," and very soon the
money which his father had so generously given him was
either squandered or obtained from him by fraud.

BRANWELL BRONTE'S VISIT TO LONDON 193

The sacrifice which his sisters had made to enable him to go
to London was not of much use, and it soon became necessary
to get Branwell back to Haworth ; he had visited most of the
sights of the City and was much interested in the Elgin Marbles,
drawings of which he intended to make.

Ten years later, and shortly before his death, he wrote to
his friend Leyland —

" I used to think that if I could have, for a week, the free
range of the British Museum — the library included — I could
feel as though I were placed for seven days in Paradise ; but
now, really, dear Sir, my eyes would rest upon the Elgin
marbles, the Egyptian saloon, and the most treasured columns,
like the eyes of a dead cod-fish." l

Thus BranwelTs visit to London in 1835 turned out a
miserable failure, and the family evidently did not talk much
about it. This accounts for Mrs. Gaskell's not having heard of
the visit, which led her into the further error in writing of
BranwelPs ability to direct a traveller, who had called at the
Black Bull, as to the best means of getting from place to place
in London. Mrs. Gaskell tells us that Branwell confessed he
had never been to London, which was untrue. Whenever this
idolised brother of the Brontes was away from home, he was
met by some temptation which he was incapable of resisting.

Branwell had described London to his sisters, and now, with
the loan from their aunt, they found it possible to realise their
dream.

Charlotte Bronte was a woman of twenty-six and Emily
was twenty-four when they proceeded to Brussels in the
company of Mary Taylor and her brother, both of whom were
well acquainted with the journey. Mr. Bronte also determined
to go with them and see a few of the sights of London on the
way. He was now a man of sixty-five and apparently had not
visited London since he was ordained at Fulham in 1806,
unless he visited it when a curate at Wethersfield.

The journey was likely to afford Charlotte Bronte the most
pleasure ; she had gained that for which she had striven,

1 The Bronte Family, by Francis A. Leyland.
13— (2200)

194 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

whilst Emily was more attached to her home. Charlotte had
evidently discussed London with her brother Branwell, as
we gather from a letter written by Mary Taylor to Mrs. Gaskell,
which, curiously, was not published in the first or second
edition of Mrs. GaskelTs Life of Charlotte Bronte, though it
finds a place in subsequent editions.

" In passing through London she [Charlotte] seemed to
think our business was, and ought to be, to see all the pictures
and statues we could. She knew the artists, and knew where
other productions of theirs were to be found. I don't remember
what we saw except St. Paul's. Emily was like her in these
habits of mind, but certainly never took her opinion, but
always had one to offer."

It was some four or five years afterwards that Charlotte,
in her Professor, put on record her first impressions of London,
which later on she amplified in Villette. Her wonderful
memory had retained the details of that first visit, and, although
the party only remained in London two nights and one day,
Charlotte managed to see many of the great sights which
London had to offer ; her enthusiasm knew no bounds when
she was breaking new ground and gaining fresh knowledge.

The father took his daughters to The Chapter Coffee House
in Paternoster Row, with its side entrance in St. Paul's Alley,
which still retains its old name. The house has been demol-
ished, and what is now known as The Chapter Wine House
has been built on the same site. Judging from a drawing of
the old Chapter Coffee House, the present building, so far as
the exterior is concerned, is very similar in design, the
reflecting lights in the narrow alley between Paternoster
Row and St. Paul's Churchyard still being necessary for the
rooms on that side. Charlotte evidently had a bedroom
looking towards St. Paul's Cathedral. The upper rooms of
the present tavern are used by one of the large drapery
establishments in St. Paul's Churchyard.

In the Professor, Charlotte, who is represented by William
Crimsworth, compares her little room in the Coffee House
with that of the large room in the hotel at Ostend, but she is
grateful for her first night in London, for she says —

THE CHAPTER COFFEE HOUSE 195

" How different from the small and dingy, though not
uncomfortable apartment I had occupied for a night or two at
a respectable inn in London while waiting for the sailing of the
packet ! Yet far be it from me to profane the memory of that
little dingy room ! It, too, is dear to my soul ; for there, as
I lay in quiet and darkness, I first heard the great bell of St.
Paul's telling London it was midnight, and well do I recall the
deep, deliberate tones, so full charged with colossal phlegm
and force. From the small, narrow window of that room
I first saw the dome, looming through a London mist. I
suppose the sensations, stirred by those first sounds, first sights,
are felt but once ; treasure them, Memory ; seal them in
urns, and keep them in safe niches ! "

Seven years later in Villette is a more detailed account, but
in both cases the novelist represents herself as travelling alone,
which, in the first visit to Brussels was not so ; yet, in a sense
she was alone, for none of the party could quite enter into her
thoughts and feelings. In Villette she mentions both the first
and second visit, when she was quite alone. Arriving in
London much later than she expected, she feared to ask for
a bed at the Chapter Coffee House after ten o'clock at night,
thinking that it was not respectable for a lady to be out so
late, especially as it was winter time. Ha worth people even
to-day go to bed soon after nine o'clock in winter, and few
women are in the streets at that hour. In Villette she un-
burdens her heart and shows her glee in her new environment —

" When I awoke, rose, and opened my curtain, I saw the
risen sun struggling through fog. Above my head, above the
house-tops, co-elevate almost with the clouds, I saw a solemn,
orbed mass, dark-blue and dim — THE DOME. While I looked,
my inner self moved, my spirit shook its always-fettered wings
half loose ; I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly
lived, were at last about to taste life. In that morning my
soul grew as fast as Jonah's gourd."

Evidently the sitting-room window, as is now the case,
looked on to Paternoster Row, still held sacred as then to
booksellers and publishers —

" Finding myself before St. Paul's, I went in ; I mounted to

196 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

the dome : I saw thence London, with its river, and its bridge,
and its churches ; I saw antique Westminster, and the green
Temple Gardens, with sun upon them, and a glad, blue sky,
of early spring above ; and, between them and it, not too
dense, a cloud of haze. Descending, I went wandering whither
chance might lead, in a still ecstacy of freedom and enjoyment ;
and I got — I know not how — I got into the heart of city life.
I saw and felt London at last : I got into the Strand ; I went
up Cornhill ; I mixed with the life passing along ; I dared the
perils of crossings. To do this, and to do it utterly alone,
gave me, perhaps an irrational, but a real pleasure."

The Chapter Coffee House was noted as a rendezvous of
authors and publishers in the eighteenth century ; and in
the early half of the nineteenth century it was frequented
by University men and the clergy.

Oliver Goldsmith used to dine at the Chapter Coffee House,
and his favourite place became a seat of honour, and was
pointed out to visitors. Leather tokens of the Coffee House
are still in existence. It was closed as a coffee house in 1854.

It was after leaving Cambridge and possibly when curate
at Wethersfield that Patrick Bronte occasionally stayed at
the Chapter Coffee House. It was not quite the place to take
young women to, for Mrs. Gaskell tells us that all the servants
except one were men, and that women did not frequent the
place ; but, from a literary standpoint, no haunt in London
could have been more appropriate for the debut of two future
authors than this old coffee house, where Goldsmith and
Johnson were wont to enjoy the discussions. Here it was that
poor Chatterton was proud to associate with the literary
geniuses of London. On 6th May, 1770, only a few months
before he died, and when he was literally starving, he tried to
deceive his mother by writing as cheerfully as he could : "I
am quite familiar at the Chapter Coffee House, and know all
the geniuses there. A character is now unnecessary ; an
author carries his genius in his pen."

When collecting the material for her Life of Charlotte Bronte
in 1856, Mrs. Gaskell visited the old Coffee House with Mr.
George Smith, though the house was empty.

THE BRONTES AND CHAPTER COFFEE HOUSE 197

She gives a detailed account of the place —

" It had the appearance of a dwelling-house, two hundred
years old or so, such as one sometimes sees in ancient country
towns ; the ceilings of the small rooms were low, and had heavy
beams running across them ; the walls were wainscoted breast
high ; the stairs were shallow, broad, and dark, taking up much
space in the centre of the house."

In 1858 John Lothrop Motley visited the house after it had
become a wine shop, but he tells us in the first volume of his
Letters that the man in charge did not know the name of
Bronte, and he concludes : " The slender furrow made by
little Jane Eyre in the ocean of London had long been effaced.'*
That was written more than fifty years ago, but there are still
many, including Americans, worshippers of the Brontes, who,
when visiting this part of London, locate the place where
Charlotte and Emily Bronte once lodged as testified by the
descriptions in the Professor and Villette.

The late Mr. Elliot Stock, once one of the oldest publishers
and booksellers in Paternoster Row, possessed a set of the first
edition of the Bionte novels bound in wood made from one of
the old beams of the Chapter Coffee House. Another admirer
of the Brontes has a set of the novels bound in wood taken
from an old beam in the Haworth Parish Church.

The most interesting association of the Brontes with the
Chapter Coffee House was when Charlotte and Anne took their
hurried flight to London in 1848, to prove their separate
identity to Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., who had received a
communication from America which threw suspicion on the
separate individuality of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. At
the same time Messrs. Newby were advertising a novel by
Acton Bell as by the author of Jane Eyre. The account
of Charlotte and Anne walking through a snowstorm from
Haworth to Keighley, and about eight o'clock on Saturday
morning arriving at the Chapter Coffee House, not knowing
where else to go, may be gathered from a graphic description
by Charlotte in a letter to Mary Taylor. Mrs. Gaskell was
surely more accurate when she described it as a thunderstorm
and not a snowstorm, as it occurred in July.

198 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Mrs. Gaskell was fortunate in finding " the old grey-haired
elderly man " who waited on the two women in 1848. He
said he was touched from the first by the quiet simplicity of
the two ladies, and he tried to make them feel comfortable and
at home in the long, low, dingy room upstairs. When Mr.
George Smith, with his mother and sister, called on them, he
found them clinging together on the most remote window
seat. Mrs. Smith thought the place was scarcely suitable for
two country -bred women to stay at, and she and her son begged
them to accept their offer of hospitality at Westbourne Place,
Bishop's Road, Paddington, but with characteristic inde-
pendence they refused, though they accepted an invitation
to the Grand Opera and went to dinner at Westbourne Place
the next day.

This was Anne's only visit to London and the only occasion
on which she travelled beyond Yorkshire ; she does not make
any use in her novels of this visit to the Metropolis. The two
sisters returned home laden with books given them by Mr.
George Smith, well pleased with the memorable journey, which
gave them much to talk about when they returned to the old
parsonage at Ha worth. Their love of painting was shown by
their visit to the Royal Academy, and to the National Gallery,
during this flying visit in 1848.

CHAPTER XVI

BRUSSELS, 1842 (JANUARY TO NOVEMBER)

BRUSSELS in 1842 — Charlotte Bronte's account of the journey —
The Heger Pensionnat as described in The Professor and Villette —
The Rue d'Isabelle — Ste. Gudule's Church — Charlotte Bronte"s con-
fession— Mrs. Gaskell's account — Thackeray's Little Travels and
Roadside Sketches.

BRUSSELS to-day is very different from what it was in the time
of Charlotte Bronte. Then the river Senne flowed through
the city, where now are the Boulevard de la Senne, the Boule-
vard d'Anspach, and the Boulevard du Hainaut, and almost
in a straight line connecting the Gare du Nord and the Gare
du Midi. It is now, through the greater part of its course in
the city, covered over, but when Charlotte Bronte was in
Brussels it was quite open, and houses, which have since been
demolished, were built along its banks. In the Hotel de Ville
are some beautiful oil-paintings of Old Brussels, with the
River Senne, as it was in the time of the Brontes, and giving
it quite a picturesque appearance.

Charlotte Bronte" gives an account in Villette of her second
eventful crossing to Belgium, when she was quite alone. Of
her first voyage from London to Ostend there is no record.
In the Professor she says of the journey in February, 1842.

" I gazed. . . Well ! and what did I see ? I will tell you faith-
fully. Green, reedy swamps ; fields fertile but flat, cultivated
in patches that made them look like magnified kitchen-gardens ;
belts of cut trees, formal as pollard willows, skirting the
horizon ; narrow canals, gliding slow by the roadside ; painted
Flemish farm-houses ; some very dirty hovels ; a grey, dead
sky ; wet road, wet fields, wet house-tops ; not a beautiful,
scarcely a picturesque object met my eye along the whole
route ; yet to me, all was beautiful, all was more than
picturesque. It continued fair so long as daylight lasted,
though the moisture of many preceding damp days had sodden
the whole country ; as it grew dark, however, the rain recom-
menced, and it was through streaming and starless darkness
my eye caught the first gleam of the lights of Brussels."

199

200 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Even to-day her description of the country between Ostend
and Brussels is very true, though there are more buildings
to be seen on the journey.

St. Michel is the patron saint of Brussels, and a fine statue
representing that saint in the Hotel de Ville, at the foot of the
grand staircase, attracts much attention. The Haworth
Church was also dedicated to St. Michael, so that for the
Brontes there was a link which connected Haworth and
Brussels.

In the Professor, Charlotte Bronte does not even give the
streets fictitious names ; she writes quite openly of Brussels, —
the Rue d'Isabelle, and the Rue Royale. The only names
she alters are those of characters ; the narrator figures as
William Crimsworth, a teacher in Brussels, though with all
the facts now known of Charlotte Bronte there is not the
slightest difficulty in recognising her as Crimsworth.

In the manuscript, which was purchased by the late Mr.
Pierpont Morgan, the title was originally The Master ; on the
front page a slip of paper is pasted over with the new title
The Professor.

Charlotte Bronte's first description of the pensionnat in
The Professor is quite accurate to the letter.

" I was soon at the entrance of the pensionnat, in a moment
I had pulled the bell ; in another moment the door was opened,
and within appeared a passage paved alternately with black
and white marble ; the walls were painted in imitation of
marble also ; and at the far end opened a glass door, through
which I saw shrubs and a grass-plot, looking pleasant in the
sunshine of the mild spring evening — for it was now in the
middle of April.

" This, then, was my first glimpse of the garden ; but I had
not time to look long, the portress, after having answered
in the affirmative my question as to whether her mistress
was at home, opened the folding doors of a room to the left,
and having ushered me in, closed them behind me. I found
myself in a salon with a very well-painted, highly varnished
floor ; chairs and sofas covered with white draperies, a green

THE HEGER PENSIONNAT 201

porcelain stove, walls hung with pictures in gilt frames, a gilt
pendule and other ornaments on the mantelpiece, a large
lustre pendent from the centre of the ceiling, mirrors, consoles,
muslin curtains, and a handsome centre table completed
the inventory of furniture. All looked extremely clean and
glittering, but the general effect would have been somewhat
chilling had not a second large pair of folding-doors, standing
wide open, and disclosing another and smaller salon, more
snugly furnished, offered some relief to the eye. This room was
carpeted, and therein was a piano, a couch, a chiffonnie"re —
above all, it contained a lofty window with a crimson curtain,
which, being undrawn, afforded another glimpse of the garden,
through the large, clear panes, round which some leaves of

ivy, some tendrils of vine were trained It was a long,

not very broad strip of cultured ground, with an alley bordered
by enormous old fruit trees down the middle ; there was a
sort of lawn, a parterre of rose trees, some flower borders,
and on the far side, a thickly planted copse of lilacs, laburnums,
and acacias."

Miss Frances Wheelwright, who died on the 6th March, 1913,
considered this description quite accurate as she remembered
it, and she was at school in Brussels with the Bronte sisters.

With all Charlotte Bronte's powers of imagination, she was
quite dependent on actual models and original places ; her
purely imaginative stories, written before she went to Brussels,
do not ring true, and she herself confessed her inability to
write except from actual experience. " Details, situations
which I do not understand and cannot personally inspect,
I would not for the world meddle with. Besides, not one
feeling on any subject, public or private, will I ever affect
that I do not really experience." This confession settles once
for all the question whether the books written by Charlotte
Bronte came from her own life-story or were entirely imagina-
tion ; and though her books are not literally true, they are
drawn from what came within her own little world of experience.

The Heger Pensionnat has now been demolished, not a
brick being left. All the old fruit trees have been uprooted,

202 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

and the garden, which had become classic ground to Bronte
pilgrims, is gone for ever. Just a few branches of some of the
trees nearest to the road are to be seen above the debris, as
if protesting against the burial of the old trees which dated
back to the time of the ancient Hospice of Terarken. It is
well that Charlotte Bronte has pictured the old school and its
garden so faithfully, for as long as her masterpiece Villette
lives the old garden, with its allee def endue, will be a source
of interest to all lovers of the Bronte literature.

This old part of the city, much lower than the Rue Royale
on the East and the Rue Montagne de la Cour on the South,
of which the Rue d'Isabelle formed a part, is being completely
transformed. A new road resting on arches has been con-
structed at very great cost, almost entirely filling the cup-
shaped depression of land in this central part of Brussels ;
at the same time, another somewhat similar road will
join it almost at right angles, leading from the Rue Royale.
This scheme will completely destroy that part of Brussels
with which the Brontes were associated. The approaches
to the Rue d'Isabelle by the steps in the Rue de la
Bibliothe*que, the Rue Villa-Hermosa and the Rue Raven-
stein will shortly disappear, and the site of the Rue d'Isabelle
itself will only be obtained by consulting old plans and drawings
of this part of Brussels. The statue of Count Belliard still
stands as if keeping sentinel over the old Rue d'Isabelle, but
it is said that it will shortly be taken to another part of the
town, or find a home in the park opposite.

The school premises have not been inhabited for years, and
it is now only possible to walk down the first flight of stone
steps on which Lucy Snowe paced in front of what was the
Hegers'old home,and very soon these will have disappeared also.

The Rue Royale has also undergone great changes since
Charlotte and Emily Bronte* traversed its wide thoroughfare.
The Hotel Cluysenaar, doubtless, was the original of the Hotel
Cr£cy. " It was an hotel in the foreign sense : a collection
of dwelling-houses, not an inn — a vast, lofty pile, with a
huge arch in its street door, leading through a vaulted covered
way, into a square, all built round." It was here, in a small

THE OLD PART OF THE CITY 203

flat in 1842, so Miss Wheelwright told me, that her father, Dr.
Wheelwright, and his family lived, and it was here that Charlotte
Bronte often found a kindly English welcome. This building,
too, has been demolished. The name Cluysenaar was in honour
of a noted Brussels architect, who had much to do with the new
buildings in Brussels ; the hotel on the same site has been
re-named several times. From being known as the Hotel
Cluysenaar, its name was changed to Hotel Mengelle, then
Hotel Astoria et Mengelle, but now it is the fashionable family
Hotel Astoria, 105 Rue Roy ale, and is conducted quite as an
English hotel.

Soon all the landmarks of the Bronte's' brief sojourn in the
gay capital will have disappeared. The Park is still left to
remind us of Lucy Snowe and Paul Emanuel in that wonderful
description of the fete given in Villette under the title of " Old
and New Acquaintances." It reads more like a dream than an
actual experience ; the topography of the route which Lucy
took is not quite accurate, nor is that of Lucy Snowe's first
visit to Madame Beck's establishment. The visit to the
fete was drawn from actual experience, for M. Heger took
Charlotte Bronte to see it whilst she was in Brussels ; this
annual festival for many years was held in the Park on the first
Sunday after the 23rd of September. It is now celebrated
on 21st, 22nd and 23rd July, when the weather is usually more
settled than in September. It commemorates the martyrs
and patriots who lost their lives in defence of their country
in 1830, when Belgium refused to be forced under the yoke
of Prince Frederick of the Netherlands. As M. Heger took
part in the defence of his country and his first wife's brother
was slain whilst fighting by his side, he would have sad
memories of the event.

The space now occupied by the Park was the centre of the
struggle for freedom in 1830, and the district around abounds
in reminiscences of the revolution. Between the Rue Fosse*
aux Chiens and the Rue St. Michel by the Rue Neuve is the
Place des Martyrs. In the centre stands the monument
erected to the memory of the Belgian troops who fell in the
struggle against the Dutch in 1830. An allegorical figure

204 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

representing liberated Belgium is recording the time from
23rd September to 26th September, the four days of the
struggle. The Belgian lion rests at the foot of the figure, and
broken chains indicate the happy era thus begun. Four
designs in marble represent the gratified country, and the
names of the 445 patriots, who died in the struggle, are inscribed
in an underground gallery. The great fete now held in July
is attended by the civic and military authorities, as well as by
representatives of the government. A feature of the celebra-
tion used to be the gathering of the old veterans, who took
part in the struggle for freedom, but now all are gone.

The great Church of St. Michel and Ste Gudule, generally
called Ste Gudule's Cathedral, where Charlotte Bronte made
an actual confession, good Protestant as she was, is a prominent
feature of the Belgian capital. It is approached by more steps
than in the Bronte days, but the interior is much the same.
Charlotte Bronte tells us that hers was a real confession, and
for once the Roman Church appealed to her. She says she
felt so lonely that she did not mind what she did, provided
it was not wrong.

Sir Wemyss Reid was the first to show that this incident in
Villette was founded on fact, for he had talked with Ellen
Nussey who knew of Charlotte's actual confession ; moreover,
a letter written by M. Heger in 1863 to Ellen Nussey (which
will be quoted later) had also been seen by him, and that
accounts for his assertion that Charlotte Bronte left Brussels,
disillusioned, after having " tasted strange joy sand drunk deep
waters, the very bitterness of which seemed to endear them
to her."

A letter written to Emily Bronte, and dated 2nd Septem-
ber, 1843, confirmed this story of the confession. Charlotte
tells how in the long vacation she was feeling ill, miserable and
lonely, and one evening after spending the day walking about
the streets of Brussels, she made a pilgrimage to the cemetery
where Martha Taylor was buried, and on her return she was
reluctant to enter the almost deserted pensionnat. As she was
passing Ste. Gudule's Church, the bell was ringing for Salut,
and an irresistible impulse seemed to compel her to go in.

STE. GUDULE'S CHURCH 205

In her letter, Charlotte gives the substance of the episode
mentioned in Villette, but she says that she " promised faith-
fully " to go to the priest's house for further counsel, though
she tells Emily that there the matter ended. " Go, my
daughter, for the present ; but return to me again." I rose
and thanked him. I was withdrawing when he signed me to
return.

" You must not come to this church," said he ; "I see you
are ill, and this church is too cold ; you must come to my

house : I live (and he gave me his address). Be there

to-morrow morning, at ten," says Lucy Snowe in Villette.

In reply to this appointment, she says " I only bowed ;
and pulling down my veil, and gathering round me my cloak, I
glided away.

" Did I, do you suppose, reader, contemplate venturing
again within that worthy priest's reach ? As soon should I
have thought of walking into a Babylonish furnace."

Harriet Martineau held no brief for the Romanists, but
she considered Charlotte Bronte overstepped the ordinary
rules of Christian charity by her bitter attack on the Romanist
religion. Having gone to Brussels to learn French, she con-
sidered she treated the Heger family and Roman Catholic
Brussels very meanly.

Now that the old Court Quarter of Brussels is being swept
away, it is important that the history of the pensionnat should
be preserved, especially for those who will always associate
it with Charlotte and Emily Bronte.

Mrs. GaskelTs account of the liistory of this old part of the
city is not quite accurate ; she probably did not clearly under-
stand her informants, and she did not get her statements
checked by some one who knew the history of the place.

Like many other Bronte pilgrims who have followed in her
footsteps, she was misled by the imposing gateway leading
to the old garden of the school, with its ancient Latin
inscription ; she evidently assumed that this was the old gate
leading to the former " great mansion," built by the Infanta
Isabella for the Arbaletriers du Grand Serment, and not

206 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

merely the gate leading to the exercise ground, for the house
itself had been demolished before the Brontes went to the
Rue d'Isabelle, and the site had been used to make an entrance
to the Rue Royale by putting four flights of steps to gain the
level of the higher part leading into the Rue Royale, past the
Belliard statue, and directly opposite to one of the entrances
to the Park. Mrs. Gaskell was also wrong in assuming that
Madame Heger's school was built in the time of the Spanish
possession of the Netherlands. If she had examined the school
closely, she would have noticed a great difference, both in
architecture and appearance with regard to age, between the
old stone gateway and the more modern house and school-
room. The Heger pensionnat had only been built about
forty years when the Brontes went there, and consequently
when Mrs. Gaskell visited it fourteen years afterwards it
was little more than fifty years old, whereas the Infanta
Isabella built the stone gateway in the first half of the seven-
teenth century, and near by she erected several small houses
for the " garde bourgeoise " ; those old houses were demolished
before the Heger pensionnat was built.

This elaborate gateway was still standing in the Rue
d'Isabelle until 1910, though in the Haworth edition of Villette,
published in 1905, the gateway was said to have been demolished.

The " Pensionnat de Demoiselles" owed its origin to an aunt
of Madame Heger, who had been a nun in a French convent,
which was destroyed in the time of the Revolution. On coming
to Brussels she opened a school and had for her first pupils
her five nieces including Mdlle Claire Zoe Parent, who after-
wards became Madame Heger. This may account for Charlotte
Bronte's theory that a nun was buried under the slab at the
foot of the " Methuselah of a pear tree," but, as the founder
of the school was not buried in the garden, the story originated
in Charlotte Bronte's imaginative brain. The actual fact
was that, in the days of the cross-bowmen, the slab, which was
there until recently, covered the entrance to an underground
passage leading to another part of the town, probably to
enable the cross-bowmen to escape if attacked from the
surrounding heights.

THE LEOPOLD PARK 207

In the Palais des Beaux Arts in the Rue de la Regence is a
large oil-painting by Antoon Sallairt of the Flemish School,
showing the grand fete of the Arbale*triers du Grand Serment,
and the Infanta Isabella shooting at the popinjay in the
presence of the numerous members of the Guild on the 15th
of May, 1615, and bringing down the bird.

The pensionnat was vacated by the Heger family in 1897,
and was afterwards used as a boys' school. Going through the
Heger Pensionnat, with a copy of Villette in hand, it was easy
to people the rooms with the characters of the novel, so care-
fully has Charlotte Bronte kept to the correct arrangement
of the interior, and no guide was necessary to find the Rue
d'Isabelle, with a copy of The Professor at hand.

The Park, which happily will remain, was the gift of the
Empress Maria Theresa. It was through the Central Park —
so called to distinguish it from the Leopold Park — that
Lucy Snowe was piloted from the bureau of the diligence by
the chivalrous Dr. John, on the night when she, solitary and
helpless, arrived in Villette.

As Charlotte did not arrive at the Rue d'Isabelle unex-
pectedly and a stranger on her second stay at Brussels, her
account does not ring true, but she evidently thought she was
doing the best for herself, for she says, " Fate took me in her
strong hand ; mastered my will, and directed my actions."

Again, her description of the forest " with sparks of purple
and ruby and golden fire gemming the foliage " on the night
of the fete brings to mind Thackeray, who later became Char-
lotte Bronte's literary hero. He was actually in Brussels in
August, 1842, when Charlotte Bronte was staying at the
pensionnat alone, and it may be that these two great novelists,
who came " to their own " about the same time, may have
passed each other in the park or in the streets of the capital.
In Little Travels and Roadside Sketches, published in Punch,
Thackeray says, "The Park is very pretty, and all the buildings
round about it have an air of neatness — almost of stateliness.
The houses are tall, the streets spacious, and the roads
extremely clean. In the Park is a little theatre, a cafe some-
what ruinous, a little palace for the king of this little kingdom,

208 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

some smart public buildings (with S.P.Q.B. blazoned on them,
at which pompous inscription one cannot help laughing),
and other rows of houses, somewhat resembling a little Rue
de Rivoli ; whether from my own natural greatness and
magnanimity, or from that handsome share of national conceit
that every Englishman possesses, my impressions of this
city are certainly anything but respectful. It has an absurd
kind of Lilliput look with it." Possibly the Rue d'Isabelle,
hidden below this central part of the city, escaped his notice,
for the chimneys were only just visible from the steps leading
from the Rue Roy ale. It is just possible that Thackeray's
view prompted Charlotte Bronte to give the title of Villette
to her novel, for she read Punch and had met Thackeray
before she wrote her story. To her, however, Brussels was a
big city compared with the little village of Haworth, though,
when she came to know London, she would think Brussels
was small in comparison.

Almost all the windows that overlooked the garden at the
pensionnat had each its relation to Villette. There was the
one from which M. Paul watched Lucy as she sat or walked
in the allee defendue, dogged by Madame Beck ; from the
same window were thrown the love letters which fell at Lucy's
feet. Then there was the old pear tree near the end of the alley.
At the base of this tree, one miserable night, Lucy buried her
precious letters, and tried also to bury her love for Dr. John.
Here she leaned her brow against Methuselah's knotty trunk,
and uttered to herself those words of renunciation, " Good-
night, Dr. John ; you are good, you are beautiful, but you are
not mine. Good-night, and God bless you." Charlotte
Bronte's recently-published letters in the Times prove that M.
Heger was the original of Dr. John in some parts of the novel.
It was in the garden that Lucy and M. Paul saw the ghost of
the nun descend from the leafy shadows overhead, and,
flitting past their own stricken faces, dart behind the
shrubbery into the darkness. By one of the tall trees near
the class rooms, the ghost gained access to its non-spiritual
fiance* e, Ginevra Fanshawe. In this garden, Charlotte and
Emily Bronte walked and talked apart from the other

THE OLD GARDEN 209

pupils, Emily, though much the taller, leaning on Charlotte's
arm.

How few women, if any, could have found in that garden so
much material for romance. Though, in later years, it was
not so large as in the days of the Brontes, yet it was full of
reminiscences. Here was the berceau underneath which
the girls sewed, whilst a French book was read to them by
Madame Heger, or one of the teachers, and the allee def endue
was defendue no longer.

" That old garden had its charms. On summer mornings
I used to rise early, to enjoy them alone ; on summer evenings,
to linger solitary, to keep tryst with the rising moon, or taste
one kiss of the evening breeze, or fancy rather than feel the
freshness of dew descending. The turf was verdant, the
gravelled walks were white ; sunbright nasturtiums clustered
beautiful about the roots of the doddered orchard giants.
There was a large berceau, above which spread the shade of
an acacia ; there was a smaller, more sequestered bower, nestled
in the vines which ran all along a high and grey wall, and
gathered their tendrils in a knot of beauty, and hung their
clusters in loving profusion about the favoured spot where
jasmine and ivy met and married them."

At the back of the garden, until within the last few years,
was an old picturesque building known as the " Galerie,"
probably dating from the days of the Hospice, and hence
Mrs. GaskelTs opinion that it was part of the school building.
This old " galerie," with its balcony, was used by the girls on
summer evenings as a theatre, and here they acted their little
plays. At other times, Madame Heger took the girls to the old
building for needlework. It had a large, open fireplace, with
a plate of iron at the back bearing a coat-of-arms, and dated
1525. This appealed to the English girls, for it was more
homely than the Belgian stoves.

The pensionnat was altered from time to time, but the
interior remained much the same as when the Brontes were
pupils there. How well the second division class room has
been pictured. On the platform at one end, Charlotte Bronte
stood to give her first lesson to the unruly Belgian girls, and

14— -(aaoo)

210 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

behind the room was the cupboard under the stairs, into which
Lucy Snowe cleverly pushed the unruly pupil, locking it
quickly, and thereby securing order in the class and the respect
of the other girls.

What tales those walls in the second division class room
could have told ; here it was that Charlotte and Emily Bronte
sat in the furthest corner, oblivious of all around them ; here
Mdlle Henri received her lessons from Crimsworth ; here Lucy
Snowe's desk was searched by Paul Emanuel — the tell-tale
odour of his cigar betraying him ; here, in the evenings, Lucy
taught Paul Emanuel French, and here he taught her
arithmetic, and perhaps without knowing it — love, to be named
friendship. It was in this room that Paul Emanuel tried to
induce Lucy Snowe to become a Roman Catholic ; here they
partook of the supper of biscuits and baked apples, and here
the violent scene occurred between Paul Emanuel and Madame
Beck, when she came suddenly upon him and Lucy Snowe.
It was from the desk on the platform, at the end of the room,
that M. Heger himself gave those masterful lectures on literature
to succeeding groups of Belgian and English girls, and it was
from that position that Paul Emanuel uttered the spiteful
tirade against the English. On that desk were heaped up the
bouquets, and from there Lucy Snowe accidentally brushed
off the professor's spectacles.

At a later date, the dormitories were used as class rooms,
when the premises were used only for day pupils — the pen-
sionnat being in another street. The oratory was converted
into a library, on the walls of which were portraits of dis-
tinguished residents of Brussels, but no place was assigned to
Charlotte Bronte. She gave the school a character which
implied censure rather than praise.

The large dormitory of the old pensionnat was probably
converted into a class room, because the story of the ghost in
Villette got abroad ; it was in one corner of this long room
that the Brontes slept, in a space curtained off from the other
eighteen beds, and it was there that Lucy Snowe suffered the
horrors of hypochondria, so graphically told in Villette, and it
was on her bed in the farthest corner that she found the costume

THE CHURCH OF THE B&GUINAGE 211

of the spectral nun, lying on the bed. It was here that
Charlotte Bronte spent the miserable night which Mrs. Gaskell
describes so sympathetically. The refectoire or dining-hall
was a long narrow room, where M. and Madame Heger took
their meals with the boarders, and where the girls prepared
their evening lessons. Here the evening service was held,
when Charlotte Bronte, hating the Roman Catholic doctrines,
escaped to the garden. It was in this large room that Paul
Emanuel read to the teachers and pupils. Some of the scenes
in Villette which are literally true, as other pupils in later
years testified, are described with all the novelist's passion.
She mentions the church of St. Jean Baptiste, " whose bell
warned the pupils in the Rue Fossette of the flight of time,"
and whose cupola was plainly to be seen from the windows of
the pensionnat. This was undoubtedly the church of St.
Jacques-sur-Caudenberg on the elevated ground above the
Rue d'Isabelle. On one side adjoining is an hotel, and on the
other an antique shop, whilst in front is one of the finest
statues in Brussels — an equestrian statue of Godfrey de
Bouillon, erected in 1848, five years after the Bronte's left
Brussels.

At the annual fete, a solemn Te Deum is always sung in the
Church of St. Jacques, though to commemorate royal events
the Church of Ste. Gudule is used.

Charlotte Bronte refers to the Te Deum in the Church of St.
Jacques in Villette, and thus proves her careful observation of
events which occurred during her stay in Brussels.

The Church of the Be"guinage is mentioned by Lucy Snowe
as the place where she was found in a faint by Dr. John. This
large church, which was said to have been designed by Rubens,
is in the Basse- Ville, near the Grand Hospice and the Rue de
Laeken. That Lucy Snowe should have wandered round this
part from Ste. Gudule is strange, as it took her completely
away from the Rue Fossette. The description fits the real
Church of the Be"guinage with its massive front, though it
certainly has no giant spire. Before Charlotte Bronte''s
days, there had been a church in the Rue d'Isabelle, which
belonged to the Beguines, an Order devoted to the sick and

212 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

poor — the members being willing to render help to all ranks,
as they were bound by no vows and were supported by the
Belgians generally.

Madame Heger arranged little excursions to the pretty
villages around Brussels, one of which is the picturesque
Boisfort, in the cemetery of which M. and Madame Heger are
buried. One of the favourite excursions taken from Brussels
is to the Field of Waterloo, and it is strange that Charlotte
Bronte' never mentions Waterloo in her letters and not often
in her novels.

CHAPTER XVII

M. AND MADAME HEGER

THE Hegers of German origin — Birth of M. Heger — His marriage —
Death of his first wife — His second marriage — The Royal Athenee
of Brussels — Mdlle Claire Zoe Parent — M. Heger's success as a
teacher — His methods of teaching — Celebration of M. and Madame
Heger's golden wedding — References in the Belgian Press — M.
Heger's death.

ALTHOUGH Belgium may rightly claim to be the home of the
Hegers for 200 years, originally they came from Vienna and
for that reason they adopted the German method of writing
the surname — Heger — without any accent mark, as is usually
adopted by English and Belgian writers. The devoirs written
by the Brontes whilst at Brussels and corrected by M. Heger,
and letters addressed to members of the Bronte family, are
signed " C. Heger."

Romain Constantin Georges Heger was born on July 10th,
1809, at Brussels and was the son of Joseph Antoine Heger
and Marie Ther&se Mare. He received a good education
and would have preferred to be a barrister according to one
of Charlotte Bronte's letters, but he devoted himself to the
profession of teaching for which he had special gifts. When a
young man of twenty-one, he married Mari£ Josephine Noyer,
who died very early in their married life on the 26th September,
1833. In 1830, when the Belgian Revolution broke out, M.
Heger joined the Belgian forces, taking part in several battles
against the Dutch, and was proud to have had a share in
obtaining the Independence of Belgium. His brother-in-
law was killed in battle. At the conclusion of the war, he
again took up his work as a teacher, and remained throughout
his life a professor at the Ath6ne"e Royal of Brussels. Here
he showed great aptitude in managing large classes of boys,
especially the lowest form, and subsequently was appointed
head master of the school. Owing to some differences of
opinion with regard to the methods to be adopted he resigned
the head mastership, and became again a class master in the
institution.

213

214 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Near the Athe'nee Royal was a school for girl boarders and
day pupils taught by Mdlle Claire Zoe Parent, to whom he was
married on 3rd September, 1836. It was to this school — the
Heger Pensionnat, in the Rue d'Isabelle — that Charlotte
and Emily Bronte were sent as boarders in 1842. Mdlle Claire
Zoe Parent was born on 13th July, 1804, so that she was five
years older than her husband, M. Heger, and was thirty-two
years of age when she was married. Charlotte Bronte was born
on 21st April, 1816, and it is a matter of some importance
that the relative ages of the Hegers and Charlotte Bronte
should be clearly recognised, as tending to throw light on the
question of the correspondence and relations between them.

M. and Madame Heger had six children : Marie Pauline
Emma, born on the 20th September, 1837; Elise Marie
Louise Florence, born on the 14th July, 1839 ; Eug&ne Claire
Zoe Marie, born on the 27th July, 1840 ; Prosper e Edouard
Augustin, born on the 28th March, 1842 ;• Julie Marie
Victorine, born on the 15th November, 1843 ; and Paul Marie
Francois Xavier, born on the 14th December, 1846.

The older of the two sons was trained as an engineer and had
just entered on his engineering career when he contracted
typhoid fever and died on 13th January, 1867 at Torquay,
where he had been sent to recoup his health, and where he is
buried. The younger son has had a distinguished career as a
doctor and has been for many years a Professor of Medicine
at the University of Brussels. Of the daughters, two are still
living, Mdlle Louise and Mdlle Claire.

In addition to his duties at the Athenee Royal, M. Heger
found time to give lessons in literature at the Heger Pensionnat,
which, however, was entirely managed by his wife.

His success as a teacher was widely recognised, and it is
interesting to quote some remarks made by the late Abb6
Richardson at a lecture given in connection with the Polyglot
Circle of Brussels at the Hotel Raven stein, overlooking the
Rue d'Isabelle, on 26th July, 1901. In 1873, as a young man
in deacon's orders, Mr. Richardson was appointed a teacher
at the Institut St. Louis, a large college in Brussels. He was
expected to be able to manage a class of forty or fifty boys,

M. HEGER

On his golden wedding day, September 3, 1886

M. HEGER AS A TEACHER 215

although he had received no training in the art of teaching.
Knowing of M. Heger's excellent reputation as a teacher he
decided to consult him. M. Heger was then an old man, and
had retired from public life, but he not only gave advice
to the young teacher but undertook to give several lessons
to a class of pupils at the Institut.

" The method M. Heger revealed to me," said Mr. Richardson,
" was no easy or royal road to teaching. His first requirement
was perfect self-sacrifice of self : un devou absolu were his words.
* If, young man, you do not feel ready to give this devou
absolu to your pupils, in heaven's name ask your superiors
to give you other work, for you will never do any good as a
professor.' For him the foundation, and the essential require-
ment for success were order and discipline, but order and
discipline obtained not by fear, but by patience and unfailing
watchfulness. For him the first point was to establish a perfect
discipline in a class, even if foi a time, say a month or more,
little direct classical work was done. Once obtain order
and an absolute command over a class, and progress was
assured to a professor without brilliant talents, whereas the
most brilliant master with an unruly or undisciplined class
could obtain nothing except perhaps the success of one or
two exceptional pupils. His next precept was to study the
pupils, to know each one of them, to neglect none, and above
all, never to allow an aversion towards any one even to enter
into the heart of the teacher. He gave me an example of a
naturally vicious and difficult pupil, whose lasting friendship he
gained, and whose character he entirely changed, simply by
visiting him daily during a rather long illness, and devoting
hours of his valuable time to playing with him and reading to
him during his convalescence. M. Heger was kind enough to
come into my schoolroom and to give me a model lesson.
Never shall I forget that lesson and the magic his genial presence
and clever and almost dramatic manner had on my boys."

One of M. Heger's favourite methods of teaching was to
give a lecture to his pupils on some literary subject or character
and then ask them to write an essay on some cognate subject.
When these essays or devoirs were finished and handed to him,

216 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

he made necessary corrections, adding notes of praise or blame
in the margin, and correcting faulty expressions by re-writing
between the lines. Where he considered the pupil was at
fault in matters of principle he pointed these out by a written
statement at the end of the essay. After examining a number
of these corrected devoirs, it is not difficult to understand the
success which M. Heger met with in his teaching experience.
The essays are marked with much more thoroughness than is
customary in English schools at the present day. An illustra-
tion of this is furnished by his correction of Charlotte Bronte's
essay on a poem " La Chute des Feuilles," which is dated
30th March, 1843, and was consequently written during her
second year at Brussels. This is one of four devoirs written by
Charlotte Bronte still in the possession of Dr. Heger, the others
being " L'Ingratitude," 16th March, 1842 ; " La Chenelle,"
llth August, 1842, and " La Mort de Moise," dated 27th July,
1843. In addition Dr. Heger possesses a devoir or letter
written by Emily Bronte. In the essay on "La Chute des
Feuilles," Charlotte Bronte was expected to study the poem
and then record in French the impression which the poem
made upon her, and explain by what means the poet made this
impression. She expressed the view in her devoir that
genius was a gift from God, and that the possessor of the gift
had nothing to do but use it. This M. Heger recognised as a
dangerous doctrine, and at the end of the essay he dealt fully
with the question and pointed out with many beautiful and
apt illustrations that work by itself would not make a poet,
but that a study of style would enhance the value of the
effort made. " Genius without study, without art, without
the knowledge of what has been done, is force without a lever

a musician with only a poor instrument upon which to

play, anxious to convey to others the beautiful music he
hears himself, he only gives expression to this in an uncultivated

voice."

Emily Bronte's devoir was a letter in French which she was
supposed to have written to her parents in England. It was
dated 26th July (1842). Although it did not require very
serious correction by M. Heger, so far as the French was

MADAME HEGER 217

concerned, he criticised it very briefly but very severely because
it was cold and was void of sentiment. He complained that
it showed no affection and so was of little value.

Although M. Heger could exalt the need of patience in
teaching, as shown in his advice to Father Richardson, like most
people with special aptitude for his work, he could be choleric
enough when he had to deal with stupid or indifferent pupils,
and he naturally preferred to teach students who were keen
about their studies and were intelligent and capable of following
out the instruction he gave them. It is thus quite easy to
understand his appreciation of the diligence, determination
and rapid progress of the Bronte sisters, and his willingness to
give them special lessons, which caused some dissatisfaction
among the other girls in the pensionnat.

When Charlotte and Emily Bronte entered the Pension-
nat, in February, 1842, the Hegers had three children,
and in the following month a son — Prospere — was born. In
the November of 1843 a fifth child, Victorine, was born, so that
Madame Heger was the mother of five young children when
Charlotte Bronte left Brussels. All who have known
Madame Heger agree that she was of a quiet and kind dis-
position, and the various portraits of her, taken from time to
time, picture her as a motherly person, in many respects the
right type of woman to have at the head of a boarding school
for girls. The continued success of the school, even after
the publication of Villette, and especially the unanimous
testimony of the many pupils who have been educated at the
pensionnat are sufficient testimony both to the ability and the
kindness of heart of Madame Heger. She acted as super-
intendent or house-mother of the school, and in order that she
might cause as little interference as possible in the rooms
that she visited she was in the habit of wearing soft slippers.
Her duties and her quiet manner of carrying them out probably
led Charlotte Bronte to think that she was in the habit of
acting as a spy. She took little part in the actual teaching,
except the instruction in the catechism with the younger
scholars.

Neither Charlotte nor Emily Brontfc had much opportunity

218 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

of knowing the real Madame Heger and consequently they
failed to appreciate her sterling worth. If they had availed
themselves of the hospitality of the Hegers' private sitting-
room, they might have got to know more of the inner life of
the family.

On 3rd September, 1886, M. and Madame Heger celebrated
their golden wedding, and in the Belgian paper Ulndependance
of 4th September, there was a lengthy appreciation of their
work in Brussels, and especially referring to M. Heger 's skill in
training very young children.

L'lNDEPENDANCE

" SAMEDI, 4th September, 1886.

" M. et Mme Heger ont ce'le'bre' hier leurs noces d'or.
Cinquante ans de mariage heureux, cinquante ans de famille
honorable et prosp£re, cinquante ans de travail utile a soi et
aux autres, et cinquante ans de bonne humeur. Cela est beau,
et vaut bien que non seulement les intimes, mais aussi les amis
d'& cote*, le public et la presse elle-meme adressent leurs
felicitations aux jubilaires.

" Plusieurs generations d'e*l£ves de TAthen^e royal de
Bruxelles ont connu le pere Heger en septieme. — Quoi, vraiment
en septic" me ! En voila, un titre de gloire ! Parlez-nous d'un
professeur de rhetorique ou d'universite ; mais la septieme,
la classe infime, celle des be*bes, la transition de la creche a
1'ecole ! — Eh ! messieurs, ne le prenez pas de si haut. Com-
mencer Penfance, croyez-vous que ce soit peu de chose ?
Eveiller les ames, et, a peine icarquillees, leur inspirer la
curiosite rudimentaire de la science et, mieux que le sentiment
encore obscur, le gout naif du devoir, c'est 1& au contraire
parmi les taches professorales une des plus importantes et
des plus difficiles. Le savoir n'y suffit pas, il y faut le don ;
aussi le vrai maitre de septieme est-il 1'oiseau rare, et quand
on le tient on le garde et on lui coupe les ailes pour peu qu'il se
laisse faire. ... Le pere Heger, s'£tait acquis une veritable

GOLDEN WEDDING 219

renommee dans cet art qui consiste a de"gourdir les intelligences
et a ^chauffer les coeurs. Et s'il y excellait c'est qu'il 1'aimait.
II Paimait tant que, promu par ses succds aux classes de
quatrieme et de troisieme pour y donner le cours de fransais,
il n'y passa que peu d'annees ; non pas que son enseignement
fut moins heureux dans ces spheres superieures ; loin de la,
il y etait tres apprecie de son jeune auditoire, et les autorites
scolaires lui rendaient justice. Mais sa chere septi&me
Pattirait, et il ne tarda pas a y rentrer

" Sans compromettre la gravite necessaire a rhomme
d'ecole, sans rien perdre de son autorite, il egayait la gram-
maire, il faisait vivre la syntaxe. II avait le mouvement, le
mot et le trait, avec un grain de fantaisie. Ses exemples,
qui parfois frisaient la bizarrerie, ne s'en gravaient que mieux
dans la memoir e, et il est telle de ses demonstrations dont la
forme capricieuse nous est restee plus presente que la r£gle
meme dont elle nous impose encore le respect.

" Chacun sait que M. et Mme Heger ont fonde* a Bruxelles
un e*tablissement qui eut longtemps le monopole, ou peu
s'en faut, de l'e"ducation des jeunes filles de notre bourgeoisie.
Voila done deux epoux qui ont forme des centaines de
families, eleve toute une societe". Le pays leur doit beaucoup.
Et parmi tant de jeunes gens et de jeunes filles d'antan qui leur
ont passe par les mains, il n'en est pas un, nous en sommes
persuades, qui ne leur ait garde un souvenir affectueux, pas
un qui a cette heure jubilaire ne s'associe du fond du cceur a
leur joie et au bonheur de leurs enfants et petits enfants."

Both M. and Madame Heger were intensely religious people,
being attached, like most Belgians, to the Roman Catholic
Church.

Madame Heger died on 9th January, 1890, in her eighty-
sixth year. Her husband survived her six years, dying
on the 6th of May, 1896, in the eighty-seventh year of his
age.

On the 9th of May under the heading " Echos de la Ville,"
there appeared in the Belgian paper Ulndtpendance the
following account of M. Heger.

220 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES
L'lNDEPENDANCE

"SAMEDI, 9 Mai, 1896.
" Schos de la Ville

" M. Constantin Heger, dont nous avons annonce la mort,
fut un homme remarquable dans la specialite pedagogique
qui lui fit un nom. Nos anciens Font connu professeur de
septieme a 1'Athenee royal de Bruxelles. Comme il avail
fait preuve de capacite"s exceptionnelles dans cette chaire
modeste et p&illeuse, il fut promu professeur de quatrieme
et de troisieme fransaises a la section des humanites, et ceux
qui passerent alors sous sa railleuse ferule peuvent dire sa
conscience professionnelle, ses meYites de lettre, et 1'art mer-
veilleux avec lequel il interessait a ses lecons des adolescents
indisciplines. Mais le pere Heger, comme on 1'appelait deja,
homme d'esprit clair et de jugement sur, se fit un jour ce
raisonnement : * Sans doute, ce que je fais la est tres bien,
ce n'est meme pas mal du tout ; mais d'autres s'en tireraient
comme moi. Rendons nous justice : si je suis superieur,
c'est dans les classes infe'rieures. Done, retournons en
septieme.' Et il y retourna.

" Etait-ce de la modestie ? De 1'heroisme plut6t. II en
faut pour prdferer une tache obscure et primaire, dont on
s'acquitte mieux que personne, a un panache rehaussant une
besogne plus releve*e qu'on accomplit aussi bien que tout
le monde. Mais, homme d'£cole jusqu'aux moelles, M. Heger
se rendait compte des difficult 6s du commencement. Le
commencement, c'est ce que nous savons le mieux, tous
Petit- Jean que nous sommes ; mais c'est aussi ce qu'on en-
seigne le plus malaise*ment. Et M. Heger y excellait. II
eut le panache tout de meme, puisqu'il fut prefet des eludes
de rAth&ie*e et officier de 1'Ordre de Leopold ; mais son titre
le plus glorieux est le talent rare qu'il de"ploya au seuil de
son e"cole dans cette premiere initiation d'ou dependent pour
Peleve le gout du travail et les succes de 1'avenir.

" Ce talent exerc6 par Pexp6rience et un constant souci
de perfection avait pour principe un don pr^cieux, une sorte

M. HEGER'S DEATH 221

de magnetisme intellectual a 1'aide duquel le professeur s'intro-
duisait dans P esprit de Peleve, excitant sa curiosite, la tenant
incessamment en 6veil, et, pour s'imposer £ son attention,
utilisant d'inspiration toutes les ressources d'une nature
g&ie"reuse et forte, recourant & 1'humeur quand le pr6cepte
faiblissait, egayant Paridite de la lec.on, secouant la grammaire,
animant la syntaxe, ne d6daignant aucun artifice pour donner
quelque relief aux notions qu'il s'agissait de graver dans la
me"moire, et cela sans perdre un instant de vue le but e*ducatif
de Tinstruction. Et si Ton songe a la multiplication de
Peffort du maitre par le nombre des Sieves et la varie"te* de leurs
aptitudes, on devine ce qu'il lui fallait de charme dans 1'auto-
rite pour maintenir attentive et amuse'e une classe alors plus
peuptee que ne sont aujourd'hui les auditoires de nos colleges.

" C'est assez dire que 1'influence pe*dagogique de Constantin
Heger fut considerable.

" Hors de Pe"cole, dans la famille et Parm'tie", rhomme e*tait
plein de vie et d'oiiginalite*. H y a une 16gende sur son c!6ri-
calisme. Catholique, il l^tait, et croyant, et profond^ment
Chretien, mais sans e"troitesse ni intolerance, ayant le respect
des convictions sinc£res et des recherches de bonne foi, et
partisan re*solu de I'mtervention scolaire de 1'Etat.

" Quel que fut son grand age, sa mort n'en laisse pas moins
les siens en proie £ une inconsolable douleur ; mais sa longue
carri£re a ete" noblement remplie, et il en reste des traces
fe"condes qui perp6tueront sa

The family grave is in the cemetery of the pretty village
of Boisfort, a few miles from the centre of Brussels. There,
a modest gravestone, weather-beaten, except where it is
protected by a small tree at the head, covers the remains of
M. and Madame Heger, who are still remembered in many
parts of Belgium for their long and meritorious educational
work in the Belgian capital,

222 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Visiting this grave only a few weeks ago, I found it in the
picturesque cemetery not far from the entrance. The little
garden that surrounds the gravestone looked very English ;
white violets were in bloom, and a laurel tree sheltered the
upper part of the grave from the sun.

On the gravestone are the following inscriptions —

"A la me'moire de Mademoiselle Marie Pauline Heger, ne'e
a Bruxelles le 20 septembre 1837, pieusement de"cede"e le 2 mars
1886.

" Madame Constantin Heger ne'e Claire Zoe' Parent, pieuse-
ment d6cede~e a Bruxelles le 9 Janvier 1890 a Page de 88 ans

et six mois.

* * * * *

" Monsieur Constantin Georges Romain Heger, veuf de
Madame Claire Zoe Parent, ancien Prefet des Etudes de
1'Athe'ne'e Royal de Bruxelles, officier de 1'ordre de Leopold,
n<§ a Bruxelles le 10 juillet 1809 et deced<§ le 6 mai 1896."

R. I. P.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BRONTES' EXPERIENCE AT THE PENSIONNAT

LIFE at the Heger Pensionnat as described in The Professor —
Charlotte and Emily Bronte" are offered positions as governess
pupils — Dr. Wheelwright and his family — Death of Julia Wheel-
wright— Death of Miss Branwell — Her will — Christmas at the
Haworth Vicarage — M. Heger's sympathy — His opinion of Emily
Bronte.

IN February, 1842, the Brontes would leave the diligence at
the Porte de Flandres, the main entrance to Brussels in
those days, armed with a letter of introduction from a Mr.
Jenkins, a clergyman who lived near Haworth, and whose
brother was the English chaplain at the Embassy in Brussels.
Mr. Bronte took his daughters to call first on the chaplain,
who afterwards accompanied them to the pensionnat of Madame
Heger, which was to be their home for the next eight months.
In The Professor Charlotte Bronte" says, " I felt free to look
up. For the first time I remarked the sparkling clearness of
the air, the deep blue of the sky, the gay clean aspect of the
whitewashed or painted houses ; I saw what a fine street
was the Rue Royale, and, walking leisurely along its broad
pavement, I continued to survey its stately hotels, till the
palisades, the gates, the trees of the park appearing in sight
offered to my eye a new attraction. I remember, before
entering the park, I stood a while to contemplate the statue
of General Belhard, and then I advanced to the top of the great
staircase just beyond, and I looked down into a narrow back
street, which I afterwards learnt was called the Rue d'Isabelle.
I well recollect that my eye rested on the green door of a
rather large house opposite, where on a brass plate, was
inscribed, ' Pensionnat de Demoiselles.' "

Though in after years Madame Heger regretted having
admitted the Brontes to her school, feeling naturally very
sore about the caricature in Villette, she was glad to remember
she gave the girls a very hearty welcome, as they were intro-
duced by the English chaplain, although he was not a Roman
Catholic. She had great admiration for the clergy and for the

223

224 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

English people, and the fact that the father of the two pupils
was an English clergyman commended them to her. Charlotte
Bronte's letter had won her esteem, and she claimed to have
taken an interest in the two pupils from the first ; her one
attitude towards the shy English girls was that of pity ; she
knew they were motherless, and in after years one who
knew Madame Heger well said she never spoke of Charlotte
but with compassion, always referring to her as "poor
Charlotte." Madame Heger's mother was named Charlotte.

After having paid their respects to Madame Heger, they
had the pleasure of spending a few hours looking round Brussels
before the father said " Good-bye " after spending a night at
the residence of Mr. Jenkins, whom Charlotte Bronte* after-
wards referred to as " that little Welsh pony Jenkins."

All the arrangements with the Brontes were made with
Madame Heger. M. Heger did not even put in an appearance,
and Mr. Bronte never saw the man who was so greatly to
influence his clever daughters. Hence both he and Miss
Branwell gave the girls into the hands of Madame Heger
without any thought of her husband, and it is very questionable
if Mr. Bronte' ever heard much of him. Paul Emanuel was
merely a character so far as Mr. Bronte was concerned ; hence
his anxiety that all should end well between Paul Emanuel
and Lucy Snowe in Vittette. But Charlotte Bronte, with
an eye to the original Paul Emanuel, determined that no
marriage should take place. The conclusion of the last
chapter in Villette is one of the choicest pieces of word painting
in the English language ; it was Charlotte Bronte" at her best,
and even M. Heger, whatever he thought of the story, must
have been proud of his former pupil, and as " her master of
literature " must have recognised the beauty of her diction
and her ability to portray character.

Charlotte Bronte, finding herself at the Brussels pensionnat,
though a woman of twenty-six, was most anxious to occupy
her place as a pupil ; both she and Emily were conscientious
and exemplary in their conduct. "They wanted learning.
They came for learning. They would learn." So determined
were they, that they ignored everything else, and this devotion

FIRST YEAR AT BRUSSELS 225

to work and desire for seclusion may account to some extent
for their lack of entire association with the other pupils. It
is evident that there was a certain amount of shyness with
strangers. Mrs. Jenkins said that she gave up asking them
to her home on Sundays and holidays as she saw that it gave
them more pain than pleasure, and the two sons of Mrs.
Jenkins — John and Edward — who were sent to the pensionnat
to escort the Brontes when they were invited to their home,
declare that they were most shy and awkward, and scarcely
exchanged a word with them during the journey. In the home,
Mrs. Jenkins said, " Emily hardly ever uttered more than a
monosyllable, and Charlotte was sometimes excited sufficiently
to speak eloquently and well — on certain subjects — but, before
her tongue was thus loosed, she had a habit of gradually
wheeling round on her chair, so as almost to conceal her face
from the person to whom she was speaking." Their taciturnity
often gave offence to those who did not know that they could
not help it. Charlotte says, " I, a bondsman, just released
from the yoke, freed for one week from twenty-one years of
constraint, must, of necessity, resume the fetters of depen-
dency." It was twenty-one years since Mrs. Bronte died.
" Hardly had I tasted the delight of being without a master,
when duty issued her stern mandate, * Go forth and seek
another service.' "

Charlotte Bronte was very happy during her first year's
residence at Brussels. Emily pined for home, but kept up
her determination to finish the year at the pensionnat. It
speaks well for the two sisters that at the end of six months
they were both offered the position of governess pupil ;
Charlotte was to teach English, and Emily was to be assistant
music mistress, for during those few months she had made
rapid progress in French, German, drawing, and music, as
Charlotte tells us, and she adds with a degree of satisfaction,
" Monsieur and Madame Heger begin to recognise the valuable
parts of her character, under her singularities."

One of the members of the family of Dr. Wheelwright, who
was at the school with the Brontes in 1842, testifies that
Charlotte and Emily kept themselves aloof from the other

15— (2300)

226 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

pupils, always walking together during play hours. They
spoke with a marked accent, partly Irish and partly Yorkshire,
which to the Wheelwrights, who had always lived in London,
sounded strange and unfamiliar. During this first year
at school, Charlotte was most polite and kindly disposed
to any of the girls who spoke to her, and she created a
favourable impression, though there were difficulties to
overcome, partly owing to differences in religion. Emily
appears to have produced a much less satisfactory feeling
in the minds of the other pupils. Miss Wheelwright said she
was reserved and made no effort to know her fellow-pupils.
One consequence was that the Wheelwrights never invited
Charlotte or Emily Bronte to their home in the Rue
Roy ale, which was not ten minutes walk from the school,
during this year. Miss Wheelwright did not like Emily.
She said that Emily was the direct opposite to Charlotte,
who was always neat and ladylike in appearance, whilst
Emily, tall and ungainly, always looked untidy, though
dressed much like her sister. She would persist in wearing
large bell sleeves, or, as they were called in those days, leg
of mutton sleeves, wide at the wrists. When the pupils
teased her about her appearance, ^she replied with much
warmth, " I wish to be as God made me." Of the five
daughters of Dr. Wheelwright, the three youngest were taught
music by Emily Bronte, and a sad time they had, for she
would only take them for lessons during their play-hours, so
that it would not interfere with her own time for private study.
The elder Miss Wheelwright, when in the playground, could
hear Emily Bronte giving instruction to her sisters in music,
and she was very indignant, for, if the teacher did not mind
missing the playtime, the little Wheelwrights, Frances, Sarah
Ann and Julia, aged ten, eight and six respectively, had no
such desire, and more than once they came from their music
lesson in tears. Miss Wheelwright never really liked Emily
Bronte [from the first time of meeting her. The Wheel-
wrights used to say that she never tried to be friendly with
them or with Maria Miller, another English girl whom the
Wheelwrights were very fond of. Miss Laetitia Wheelwright

SCHOOL FRIENDS 227

wore a gold ring set with garnets which Maria Miller gave to
her in 1843. Afterwards Miss Fanny Wheelwright treasured
it until her death. One of the souvenirs of the Brussels
schooldays, treasured by Miss Wheelwright, was the parting
lines given to her by Charlotte Bronte, written in Dutch and
French : " Think of me as I always shall of you. Your
friend, Charlotte."

All the time that Emily was at school with Charlotte, Miss
Wheelwright was struck with Charlotte's devotion to her
sister, though she thought with M. Heger that Emily tyrannised
over her sister, and Miss Wheelwright confessed to being
pleased when Emily did not return with Charlotte for a second
year at the pensionnat.

It is pleasant to have the opinion of another pupil, who was
at school with the Brontes. Mdlle L. de Bassompierre, who
is still living in Brussels, told me that she was sixteen when the
Brontes went to Brussels, and, as the two English women were
put in her class, she had an excellent opportunity of observ-
ing them, especially as they were quite friendly with her,
although she was a Belgian. Charlotte Bronte has used Mdlle
de Bassompierre's name in Villette, but the original of Paulina
de Bassompierre is not taken from the Belgian friend.

In marked contrast to Miss Wheelwright and her sisters,
Mdlle de Bassompierre had most praise for Emily Bronte, and
she said she considered her the more sympathetic of the two,
and the kinder and more approachable ; indeed she much
preferred Emily to Charlotte, and so did some of the other
pupils; she was much better looking, though pale and thin.

The Belgian girl and Emily became friends and, before
Emily left, she gave to Mdlle de Bassompierre a drawing in
pencil of a tree, signed Emily Bronte. This Mdlle de Bassom-
pierre has treasured for over seventy years, and, like everything
that Emily did, it bears the stamp of good, careful work, and is
remarkable for the amount of detail which she has put into the
simple trunk of a tree with its branches. It is evidently done
on a page of a drawing book of the usual size, for drawings of
Charlotte's on similar paper and of the same size are still in
existence.

228 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Mdlle de Bassompierre well remembers hearing M. Heger
read out the devoirs written by Emily and Charlotte, and
Emily's were the better. She also had a recollection of Charlotte
hotly defending Wellington, in a discussion on the French and
English. Mdlle de Bassompierre became very fond of Emily,
and considered her superior to Charlotte in every way, and
certainly more sympathetic.

Judging by the results of the instruction given to the younger
sisters, the Wheelwrights did not think that Emily was either
a good musician or a good teacher, but they were much too
young to judge, and, whilst they were devoted to Charlotte
Bronte, they never cherished any love for Emily. Julia
Wheelwright died of typhoid fever whilst a day pupil at the
school during the first year of the Bronte residence. After-
wards Dr. and Mrs. Wheelwright allowed their four daughters
to spend a month at the pensionnat whilst they had a holiday
on the Rhine. Miss Laetitia Wheelwright cherished for years
a letter which she received from Madame Heger after the
death of Julia Wheelwright, who was buried in the Protestant
part of the Brussels cemetery. This burial ground has been
demolished and the remains transferred to a new cemetery
near by. Mrs. Wheelwright treasured a plan of the cemetery,
which is still in the possession of her granddaughter (Mrs. J. J.
Green, of Hastings), on which is marked, with a cross, the
place where Julia Wheelwright was buried.

Madame Heger's letter (translated) is as follows —

" My dear Lsetitia,

" I proposed to call upon your mamma yesterday morning,
but I have been unwell, and obliged to keep to my room;
To-day I am better, but unable to go out. I wish none the
less to have tidings of you. How is your mamma ? I much
fear that the watching, the fatigue and sorrow have injured
her health. Happily all the children are so good, such good
pupils that she will find the care of them some compensation
for the grievous loss she has sustained.

"When I see your parents, I shall tell them how much
I appreciate your papa's obliging letter. I am very grateful

DEATH OF JULIA WHEELWRIGHT 229

to him for his thought of us in so sad a time, which will
leave here, as at your house, long traces. The little angel
whom we mourn deserves all our regrets. Nevertheless, we
ought to acknowledge that she is sheltered from the
misfortunes and sorrows which we still have to endure.

" Adieu ! My dear Laetitia ! Embrace your little sisters
for me, and present to your dear parents, whom I esteem
more each day, my respectful affection.

" Your devoted

"Z. Hege

"Monday, 21s/ September (1842)."

Miss Frances Wheelwright told me that Charlotte Bronte
admitted that she was attracted to Miss Wheelwright by the
look on her face, when she saw her standing on a stool in the
schoolroom, looking at the Belgian girls — who were mis-
behaving themselves — with so much contempt and disdain.
" It was so English," said Charlotte Bronte ; but Mdlle de
Bassompierre does not think that Charlotte and Emily showed
any dislike of the Belgian girls.

Madame Heger was surprised in later years to find that the
Bronte sisters complained of their school days with her, for
they were not without English friends. There were the two
old school friends from Gomersal — Mary and Martha Taylor —
living at a school just outside Brussels, where the Bronte's
were always welcome. They also visited the Dixons — friends
and relatives of the Taylors — and Mrs. Jenkins, the wife of
the chaplain ; but the isolation in which the Bronte sisters
dwelt was of their own making.

Prof. Dimnet, the only Frenchman who has written a book
on the Brontes, says in Les Sceurs Bronte, " Her (Charlotte
Bronte) greatest luck was meeting with Monsieur Heger,"
and he compares what M. Heger did for Charlotte Bronte
with what George Henry Lewes did for George Eliot. Both
were married men when they met the future famous novelists,
and, whatever may be said to the contrary, there was as great
an affinity between Charlotte Bronte and M. Heger as between

230 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

George Eliot and George Henry Lewes, though Charlotte
Bronte fled when she discovered it, rather than live in the
same house as M. Heger. In Villette, Paul Emanuel says to
Lucy Snowe —

" ' It has happened to me to experience impressions — '

" ' Since you came here ? '

" ' Yes ; not many months ago.'

" * Here ?— in this house ? '

" * Yes.'

" Bon ! I am glad of it. I knew it, somehow, before you
told me. I was conscious of rapport between you and myself.
You are patient, and I am choleric ; you are quiet and pale,
and I am tanned and fiery ; you are a strict Protestant, and
I am a sort of lay Jesuit ; but we are alike — there is affinity
between us. Do you see it, Mademoiselle, when you look in the
glass ? Do you observe that your forehead is shaped like
mine — that your eyes are cut like mine ? Do you hear that
you have some of my tones of voice ? Do you know that you
have many of my looks ? I perceive all this, and believe that
you were born under my star. Yes, you were born under
my star ! Tremble ! for where that is the case with mortals,
the threads of their destinies are difficult to disentangle ;
knottings and catchings occur — sudden breaks leave damage
in the web. But these ' impressions ' as you say, with
English caution. I, too, have had my ' impressions'."

Recently, a former pupil, Mrs. Clarke, in an interview she
granted to the Daily Mail, states that M. Heger in her day
could tell the girls' characters from their faces.

The first year of Charlotte and Emily Bronte's stay in Brussels
was a very busy one. Charlotte Bronte tells us in one of her
letters that she had been at the pensionnat three months
before M. Heger spoke to her ; he merely wrote his criticisms
on the margin of her devoir and he was puzzled to know
why her composition was always better than her translation.

" The fact is, some weeks ago, in a high-flown humour, he
forbade me to use either dictionary or grammar in translating
the most difficult English compositions into French. This
makes the task rather arduous, and compels me every now

POEM IN THE PROFESSOR 231

and then to introduce an English word, which nearly plucks
the eyes out of his head when he sees it. When he is very
ferocious with me I cry ; that sets all things straight. Emily
and he don't draw well together at all. Emily works like a
horse, and she has had great difficulties to contend with —
far greater than I have had."

M. Heger knew that the two women had come to Brussels to
prepare themselves for taking charge of a school afterwards,
and that they were keenly anxious to improve their education
and especially to become proficient in French and German.
He was a model teacher, and was proud to have such intellectual
women as pupils. Miss Wheelwright told me that he made
no secret of his admiration of the intellectual ability of the
Bronte's. Knowing how hard they would have to work, he
never spared either himself or them, and he rendered them
most willing assistance.

In The Professor Charlotte Bronte gives in a poem a very
clear account of her life as a pupil at the Heger Pensionnat.
It is noticeable that the heroine of the poem is named " Jane " ;
it was written shortly after leaving Brussels, although not
published until some ten years afterwards.

This poem of thirty-three verses tells of Charlotte's life at
this foreign school, and when she decided to leave Brussels
M. Heger gave her a kind of diploma, dated and sealed with
the seal of the Ath6n6e Royal de Bruxelles, certifying that
she was perfectly capable of teaching the French language,
having well studied the grammar and composition thereof.
This certificate is dated 29th December, 1843 ; and on
2nd January, 1844, she arrived at Haworth, in the depths of
despair, because she had left her master. In the light of the
Bronte letters of The Times, this poem is interesting.
Beginning at the twenty-fourth verse, which tells of Charlotte's
departure from Brussels, it reads as follows —

" At last our school ranks took their ground,

The hard-fought field I won ;
The prize, a laurel-wreath, was bound
My throbbing forehead on.

232 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Low at my master's knee I bent,

The offered crown to meet ;
Its green leaves through my temples sent

A thrill as wild as sweet.

The strong pulse of Ambition struck

In every vein I owned ;
At the same instant, bleeding broke

A secret, inward wound.

The hour of triumph was to me

The hour of sorrow sore ;
A day hence I must cross the sea,

Ne'er to recross it more.

An hour hence, in my master's room,

I with him sat alone,
And told him what a dreary gloom

O'er joy had parting thrown.

He little said ; the time was brief,

The ship was soon to sail,
And, while I sobbed in bitter grief,

My master but looked pale.

They called in haste ; he bade me go,

Then snatched me back again ;
He held me fast and murmured low,

' Why will they part us, Jane ?

' Were you not happy in my care ?

Did I not faithful prove ?
Will others to my darling bear
As true, as deep a love ?

' O God, watch o'er my foster child !

O guard her gentle head !
When winds are high and tempests wild,
Protection round her spread !

' They call again ; leave then my breast ;

Quit thy true shelter, Jane ;
But when deceived, repulsed, opprest,
Come home to me again ! ' '

During the absence of Charlotte and Emily Bronte in
Brussels, Miss Branwell and her brother-in-law would have
had a peaceful time at the parsonage but that Branwell was

DEATH OF MISS BRANWELL 233

still at home without any hope of a situation. Anne was at
Thorpe Green. It was at this time that Bran well was writing
miserable letters to his friends ; his aunt, who had long been
disappointed in her nephew, had her last days clouded
by the sad conduct of her favourite. On 29th October, 1842,
Miss Bran well died, after a fortnight's illness. A letter was
despatched to Charlotte and Emily, and one also to Anne,
who reached Ha worth just too late. Her father and brother
met her in the little hall of the parsonage, and in response to
her anxious enquiry told her that Miss Bran well was dead.
Both Branwell and Anne grieved much for the loss of the
aunt, who had made them her special favourites, and to
whom she had been partial and indulgent. Charlotte and
Emily got the sad news in Brussels that their aunt was ill on
2nd November, and, before they could get ready to start for
home, they received another letter to say that she was dead.
They sailed on Sunday, 6th November, from Antwerp, travel-
ling day and night, and reaching Haworth on Tuesday —
ten days after Miss Bran well's death — only to find that the
funeral was over, and Mr. Bronte and Anne were sitting in
quiet grief for the loss of one who had been of such service in
their home for nearly twenty years.

A previous writer has remarked on the haste with which
Miss Branwell was buried, but allowance had to be made
for the time it took to get the news to Brussels.

Branwell, anxious to give expression to his feelings of sorrow,
wrote to his friend of the Luddenden Foot days, Mr. Francis
Grundy, saying he was at the time attending the death-bed of
his aunt, who had been as a mother to him for twenty years ;
and on the next day, when his aunt died, he wrote, " I am
incoherent, I fear, but I have been watching two nights, wit-
nessing such agonising suffering as I would not wish my
worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the pride and
director of all the happy days connected with my childhood."

There is no doubt that Branwell felt the loss deeply. Miss
Branwell had made her will nine years previously, when
Branwell was her pride, and she had made Mr. Bronte" her
first executor. Her money was to be shared among her

224 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

English people, and the fact that the father of the two pupils
was an English clergyman commended them to her. Charlotte
Bronte's letter had won her esteem, and she claimed to have
taken an interest in the two pupils from the first ; her one
attitude towards the shy English girls was that of pity ; she
knew they were motherless, and in after years one who
knew Madame Heger well said she never spoke of Charlotte
but with compassion, always referring to her as " poor
Charlotte." Madame Heger's mother was named Charlotte.

After having paid their respects to Madame Heger, they
had the pleasure of spending a few hours looking round Brussels
before the father said " Good-bye " after spending a night at
the residence of Mr. Jenkins, whom Charlotte Bronte" after-
wards referred to as " that little Welsh pony Jenkins."

All the arrangements with the Brontes were made with
Madame Heger. M. Heger did not even put in an appearance,
and Mr. Bronte" never saw the man who was so greatly to
influence his clever daughters. Hence both he and Miss
Branwell gave the girls into the hands of Madame Heger
without any thought of her husband, and it is very questionable
if Mr. Bronte' ever heard much of him. Paul Emanuel was
merely a character so far as Mr. Bronte was concerned ; hence
his anxiety that all should end well between Paul Emanuel
and Lucy Snowe in Villette. But Charlotte Bronte, with
an eye to the original Paul Emanuel, determined that no
marriage should take place. The conclusion of the last
chapter in Villette is one of the choicest pieces of word painting
in the English language ; it was Charlotte Bronte" at her best,
and even M. Heger, whatever he thought of the story, must
have been proud of his former pupil, and as " her master of
literature " must have recognised the beauty of her diction
and her ability to portray character.

FIRST YEAR AT BRUSSELS 225

One of the members of the family of Dr. Wheelwright, who
was at the school with the Brontes in 1842, testifies that
Charlotte and Emily kept themselves aloof from the other

13— (2300)

236 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

peu a faire avec de pareilles eleves ; leur avancement est
votre oeuvre bien plus que la notre ; nous n'avons pas eu a
leur apprendre le prix du temps et de 1'instruction, elles avaient
appris tout cela dans la maison paternelle, et nous n'avons eu,
pour notre part, que le faible merite de diriger leurs efforts et
de fournir un aliment convenable a la louable activit6 que vos
filles ont puisee dans votre exemple et dans vos Ie9ons.
Puissent les eloges me'rite's que nous donnons & vos enfants
vous etre de quelque consolation dans le malheur qui vous
afflige ; c'est la notre espoir en vous e'crivant, et ce sera,
pour Mesdemoiselles Charlotte et Emily, une douce et belle
recompense de leurs travaux.

" En perdant nos deux chores ele" ves nous ne devons pas
vous cacher que nous e*prouvons a la fois et du chagrin et de
l'inquie*tude ; nous sommes afflige's parceque cette brusque
separation vient briser 1'affection presque paternelle que nous
leur avons voue*e, et notre peine s'augmente a la vue de tant de
travaux interrompues, de tant de choses bien commencees, et
qui ne demandent que quelque temps encore pour etre mene'es
£ bonne fin. Dans un an, chacune de vos demoiselles eiit
e"te* entitlement pre*munie contre les eventuality's de 1'avenir ;
chacune d'elles acqu6rait a la fois et 1'instruction et la science
d'enseignement ; Mile Emily allait apprendre le piano ;
recevoir les lemons du meilleur professeur que nous ayons en
Belgique, et deja elle avait elle-meme de petites e"l£ves ; elle
perdait done a la fois un reste d'ignorance, et un reste plus
g£nant encore de timidite* ; Mile Charlotte commenc.ait a
donner des Ie9ons en fran9ais, et d'acque"rir cette assurance, cet
aplomb si necessaire dans 1'enseignement ; encore un an tout
au plus, et 1'ceuvre e*tait acheve"e et bien achev6e. Alors
nous aurions pu, si cela vous eiit convenu, offrir & mesde-
moiselles vos filles ou du moins a Tune des deux une position
qui eiit e*te dans ses gouts, et qui lui eut donn6 cette douce
inde*pendance si difficile a trouver pour une jeune personne.
Ce n'est pas, croyez-le bien, monsieur, ce n'est pas ici pour
nous une question d'inte're't personnel, c'est une question
d'affection ; vous me pardonnerez si nous vous parlons de
vos enfants, si nous nous occupons de leur avenir, comme

-*--oc^e-«/ «

LETTER FROM M. HEGER TO REV. P. BRONTE

1 842

M. HEGER'S INTEREST IN THE BRONTES 237

si elles faisaient partie de notre famille ; leurs qualites per-
sonnelles, leur bon vouloir, leur zfcle extreme sont les seules
causes qui nous poussent a nous hasarder de la sorte. Nous
savons, Monsieur, que vous peserez plus inurement et plus
sagement que nous la consequence qu'aurait pour 1'avenir une
interruption complete dans les etudes de vos deux filles ; vous
deciderez ce qu'il faut faire, et vous nous pardonnerez notre
franchise, si vous daignez consideYer que le motif qui nous fait
agir est une affection bien desinte'rressee et qui s'affligerait
beaucoup de devoir deja se resigner a n'etre plus utile a vos
chers enfants.

" Agre"ez, je vous prie, Monsieur, 1'expression respectueuse
de mes sentiments de haute consideration.

" C. HEGER."

When it is remembered that this letter was sent by a man
who was only seven years older than Charlotte Bronte, and,
although we is used throughout the letter, there is no direct
mention of Madame Heger, it is very certain that M. Heger
had a real interest in the Bronte sisters, and his mention of
" almost paternal affection " and of "a very disinterested
affection " shows that his feelings were more than those of an
ordinary teacher. Several reasons have been given to account
for Charlotte Bronte's return to Brussels, but no previous
writer has drawn attention to this letter, which proves that
Charlotte was the one to whom the appointment was to be
offered at the end of another year. Although M. Heger,
in conversation with Mrs. Gaskell, spoke more highly of Emily's
abilities and talents than of Charlotte's, he, evidently, like
Miss Wheelwright, preferred that Charlotte should return,
though it showed his insight and ability to read character
when he told Mrs. Gaskell that he rated Emily's genius as
something even higher than Charlotte's.

CHAPTER XIX

CHARLOTTE BRONTfe'S SECOND YEAR AT BRUSSELS

CHARLOTTE BRONTE decides to return to Brussels — Her journey as
described by Mrs. Gaskell — Reference in Villette — Her second year
at the Pensionnat — She decides to return to Haworth — Various
explanations — Charlotte Bronte's experience used in her novels —
The testimony of other pupils at the Pensionnat.

AFTER the death of Miss Branwell, when Anne had returned to
Thorpe Green, Charlotte determined to go back to Brussels,
although she had an appointment in England offered to her
at fifty pounds a year. In Brussels she was only to receive
sixteen pounds, and from this amount she would have to deduct
the cost of the journey, and also the charges for the lessons
in German, which she wished to take. The three to four
hundred pounds left to each of the sisters gave them for the
first time in their lives a small income, and possibly this
influenced Charlotte Bronte in accepting a small salary, as
there would be no need for her to help her sisters.

The few friends that Charlotte Bronte had were surprised
that she should have returned to Brussels, for at the first
visit she and Emily had meant to stay only six months, but
owing to their rapid progress they succeeded in being retained
as governess pupils, and for that reason they lengthened their
stay, which would have extended to Christmas, if Miss Branwell
had not died ; by this time they hoped to be sufficiently
proficient in French and German to teach the subjects in an
English school of their own. Then, again, Charlotte had
written to her friends disparaging the Belgians, which would
seem to be a further reason for not returning to Brussels.

Miss BranwelTs legacy enabled the sisters to defer for a time
the attempt to start a school of their own, and it became also
necessary to attend to the needs of the old vicar. There has
long been much speculation as to the reasons which induced
Charlotte in January, 1843, to decide to return to Brussels.
It is argued that she was extremely anxious to obtain further
lessons in German, and to gain experience in teaching English.

238

SECOND JOURNEY TO BELGIUM 239

It is true that at this period there was not the same pressing
need to earn money. The lessons in German cost her seven
pounds ten shillings a year, and she had her clothing to pur-
chase and other incidental expenses to meet, so that she was
poorer when she left Brussels than when she arrived there.
From a monetary standpoint, her visit to Brussels was a
failure. Some of her friends have thought there must have
been some powerful influence attracting her to Brussels, but,
in a letter to Ellen Nussey the following April, she repudiated
the idea that " the future epoux of Mademoiselle Bronte " was
on the Continent, and she sarcastically scouted the idea that
she had any more powerful motive in crossing the sea merely
to return as teacher than respect for her master and mistress —
M. and Mme Heger — and gratitude for their kindness.

Mrs. Gaskell gives an interesting account of Charlotte
Bronte's second visit to Brussels.

In Villette this second journey from London to Brussels is
described very minutely. That Charlotte Bronte", who
heartily despised the Roman Catholic Belgians, and " hated
and abhorred " teaching in any form, should voluntarily cross
the North Sea in January — bad sailor as she was — merely
because she felt grateful to M. and Madame Heger for their kind-
ness to her, is a solution to a problem which many Bronte
enthusiasts decline to accept. The kind letter which M.
Heger sent to the Rev. Patrick Bronte urging him to allow his
daughters to return to Brussels had doubtless something to
do with Charlotte Bronte's decision, especially as she was the
one to whom an appointment in the school was to be offered,
but seeing that she could have obtained a position as governess
in England at a salary of fifty pounds a year, and that like
Emily she could have studied German privately, it was strange
that she should have deliberately chosen to go to Brussels.
It is quite evident that she wished to go, though Mrs. Gaskell
spoke of the two sisters when at Brussels as exiles.

Of Charlotte's journey to London in January, 1843, Mrs.
Gaskell has given a good account. Charlotte, arriving late in
London, took a cab and drove straight to the landing-stage
at London Bridge, instead of going to the Chapter Coffee House,

240 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTfiS

as she intended, for fear that it would be considered unseemly
for a woman to ask for bed and breakfast at so late an hour.

In Villette Charlotte gives a most graphic account, and also
of the voyage when she meets Ginevra Fanshawe on board.
Arriving at Brussels, Charlotte admits she was received most
kindly, and in one of her letters to a friend she speaks of
Madame Heger as " a most kind lady."

Emily was greatly missed and, after the excitement of the
arrival, Charlotte seems to have experienced loneliness, though
she had the Taylors, the Dixons, and the Wheelwrights as
kind friends, whom she was invited to meet, but as she was
now a teacher, rather than a pupil, she found time to worry,
and become depressed. The absence of Emily made all the
difference. Until the summer vacation, Charlotte managed
to keep up, but, during that lonely time, she succumbed to
melancholy. There was a reason for this other than Emily's
absence.

Writing to Emily a month before her return from Brussels
she says, " Low spirits have afflicted me lately, but I hope all
will be well, when I get home — above all, if I find papa and you
and Bran well and Anne well. I am not ill in body ; it is only
the mind that is a trifle shaken for want of comfort." This
letter proves that the father had nothing to do with Charlotte
Bronte's return. Whatever prompted her to return was
something connected with herself, and Mr. Bronte had no more
to do with it than any other member of the family. Mr.
Shorter affirms, on the authority of Mr. Nicholls and Ellen
Nussey, that Charlotte Bronte returned from Brussels because
her father had given way to drink, and they give, as a reason
for her second stay at Brussels, her desire for further instruction
in German, or as one writer put it " self -development." Miss
May Sinclair in The Three Brontes writes, "With her aunt
dead, and her brother Branwell drowning his grief for his
relative in drink, and her father going blind, and beginning
in his misery to drink a little too, Charlotte felt that her
home did require her. Equally she felt that either Emily or
she had got to turn out and make a living, and since it could
not be Emily, it must be she." This is not at all true to fact.

DEPRESSION AFTER LEAVING BRUSSELS 241

After Miss Branwell's death, Branwell Bronte was at home,
sober and sensible, and during the whole of 1843 whilst
Charlotte Bronte was at Brussels he was at Thorpe Green,
where Charlotte tells us he was " wondrously valued"
Branwell kept his appointment for two and a half years, from
January, 1843, until July, 1845, going to Scarborough with
the Robinsons in the summer holidays. Again, if it was a
question of earning a living, why did Charlotte Bronte refuse
the position in England at fifty pounds a year and go to Brussels
where she actually lost money ? Further, although Mrs.
Gaskell says that Charlotte Bronte' gave to M. and Madame
Heger as excuse for leaving " her father's increasing blindness,"
yet in her letter to Emily on 1st December, 1843, she writes,
"Tell me whether papa really wants me very much to come
home, and whether you do likewise. I have an idea that I
should be of no use there — a sort of aged person upon the
parish." The letter concludes, " Safety, happiness and
prosperity to you, papa and Tabby." There is thus no refer-
ence whatever to her father's blindness. This letter was only
written eighteen days before she writes, on 19th December,
to say that she has taken her determination, and means to be
home on the second day in the New Year. She could not
have felt that she would have been a sort of aged person on
the parish if she was convinced that her father needed her.
There is nothing in Charlotte Bronte's letters of 1844 to in-
dicate great anxiety about her father's eyesight, but there is no
enthusiasm for anything. " I begin to perceive that I have
too little life in me nowadays, to be fit company for any except
very quiet people. Is it age, or what else that changes me so ? "

Although she said in her last letter from Brussels that she
was not ill in body, she never seemed to be well during the
first year after leaving Brussels. There were constant com-
plaints of depression and ill-health. If she had felt that she
was doing her duty by remaining at Haworth, there would
have been no reason for her dissatisfaction.

" I suffered much before I left Brussels. I think, however
long I live, I shall not forget what the parting with M. Heger
cost me ; it grieved me so much to grieve him, who had been

242 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

so true, kind and disinterested a friend." It is noticeable
that Madame Heger is not mentioned.

Madame Heger had a very busy life with her school and
her home, and Charlotte Bronte says in the first letter after her
return to Brussels in January, 1843, that Madame Heger
received her very kindly, and told her to use their sitting-room
as her own, but that she declined, as she did not wish to
presume on their kindness. Evidently Madame Heger had
no feelings of jealousy at the beginning of the year, but it
may have developed later ; and when in October, 1843,
Charlotte Bronte gave her resignation to her, she agreed to
accept it, but M. Heger stormed and would not let her go,
and she consented to remain, ultimately leaving at the begin-
ning of the following year. It is certain that at this time she
was suffering from acute melancholia. She thanked Mary
Taylor for the advice she gave to leave Brussels, and some tjme
afterwards she sent her ten pounds for the service she had
rendered.

Assuming that Madame Heger was not anxious for Charlotte
Bronte to remain, why was she so very miserable at leaving
M. Heger, and why did she continue to be so depressed and
ill when at home, after having left Brussels ? She had gained
what she sought — a good knowledge of French and German,
and she was free to lead her own life at Ha worth. Mrs.
Gaskell was absolutely wrong in attributing " her (Charlotte's)
now habitual sleeplessness at night " to " Branwell's
mysterious and distressing conduct," for, as previously men-
tioned, Branwell was giving no cause for anxiety for a year
and a half after Charlotte returned ; and the sleepless nights
and bitter tears must be traced to some other source. Mrs.
Gaskell tells us that these tears, and the close application to
minute drawing and writing in her younger days, " were
telling on her poor eyes." At this time Charlotte Bronte
wrote several letters to M. Heger, from which Mrs. Gaskell
quoted extracts.

In one dated 24th July, 1844, she says—

" Now my sight is too weak to write. Were I to write

LETTERS TO FRIENDS 243

much I should become blind. This weakness of sight is a
terrible hindrance to me. Otherwise, do you know what I
should do, sir ? I should write a book, and I should dedicate
it to my literature master — to the only master I ever had —
to you, Sir. I have often told you in French how much I
respect you — how much I am indebted to your goodness, to
your advice ; I should like to say it once in English. But
that cannot be — it is not to be thought of. The career of
letters is closed to me — only that of teaching is open. It
does not offer the same attractions ; never mind, I shall
enter it, and if I do not go far it will not be from want of
industry . . . '

There are several letters to other friends at this period, but
there is not a word about her approaching blindness, which
is certainly very strange. If there was any danger to Charlotte
Bronte's eyesight, it was caused by " the tears and sleepless
nights," the result of fretting her heart out for letters from
M. Heger.

A letter written in March says, " Papa and Emily are well,"
and a letter from Bran well also states that he and Anne " are
pretty well," so that nobody in the home circle was causing
Charlotte's misery. Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor — her
only correspondents in England — were trying to cheer her
during this time of depression, The only other person to
whom she was writing was M. Heger, and her letters to him
showed a craving for pity and sympathy. Mrs. Gaskell
seems to have tried to shield Charlotte Bronte, whilst not
hesitating to blame Bran well, but, as he was not the cause
of the trouble, it is not possible to arrive at any other con-
clusion than that Charlotte Bronte left Brussels, when she
realised she had unconsciously found her affinity, and yet she
could not break off all connection with the Hegers. Although
much has been said about Madame Heger being the cause of
Charlotte Bronte's leaving Brussels, yet in letters to M. Heger
Madame Heger is referred to in the kindest terms.

Judging by the extracts given by Mrs. Gaskell, the somewhat
childish letters which Charlotte Bronte sent to M. Heger

244 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

hardly correspond with what one would expect a woman of
nearly thirty to write to a married man a few yeais older than
herself, especially if she considered his wife was jealous of her,
or if the wife had given her cause to think so. From the letters
which Mrs. Gaskell probably saw, connected with Charlotte
Bronte's experience in Brussels, it is tantalising to get only
two short extracts. It is evident she knew more than she-
was willing to write, and was merciful to her friend, and
tactfully avoided offending the Hegers. Since the above
was written, four letters (two of which contain the extracts
mentioned) were published in The Times on 29th July,
1913.

During this period, Mrs. Gaskell used the Branwell Bronte
story for all and much more than it was worth. Though
there is evidence that Mrs. Gaskell had seen the four letters
now published, it is clear that Charlotte Bronte did not give
the real reason for deciding to return to Haworth, and, although
she gave Ellen Nussey to understand that she despised Madame
Heger, she conveys quite a different impression in her letter
to M. Heger. Moreover, there is not a line or a word to support
the strange theory that the curate, Mr. Smith, was addicted
to the drink habit and had influenced the Rev. Patrick Bronte
to such an extent that it was necessary for Charlotte Bronte
to return home. When Mr. Smith left Haworth, he imme-
diately got an appointment at Keighley, which is only four
miles away, and in constant communication with Haworth.

Ellen Nussey wondered why the Rev. Patrick Bronte
should have been so anxious that Charlotte should write
to her, after her visit to Haworth in January, 1844,
and immediately after Charlotte's return from Brussels,
to explain that the curate, Mr. Smith, meant nothing by
his flirtation with her (Ellen Nussey). Charlotte Bronte says
she cannot understand her father being so particular, as he
was usually sarcastic about such matters, but he constantly
insisted that she must write to her friend. This rather suggests
that he had discovered the reason for Charlotte Bronte's
return to Haworth, and he probably blamed her for believing
that the Hegers' kindness meant anything more than sympathy

FAREWELL TO BRUSSELS 245

for her, and the old vicar wished to save Ellen Nussey from
making the same mistake with regard to Mr. Smith.

It is certainly remarkable that Charlotte Bronte should go
to Brussels, and lose her heart to the master of the house,
and that Bran well Bronte should go to Thorpe Green at the
same time and get madly in love with the wife of his employer,
thus leading to his summary dismissal, with a threat from the
master to shoot him if he came near the place again ; and,
though Charlotte was not actually dismissed, it is a fact that
Madame Heger gave her to understand that she would not
need her after the close of 1843. It is evident that both
Charlotte and Branwell were much alike in temperament, and
they suffered in health in much the same way. Emily
and Anne had more stability of character, and knew how to
keep their own counsel. Both Charlotte and Branwell
were excitable, and at times showed a great want of
balance.

Although Branwell never wrote a novel which could explain
his passion for Mrs. Robinson, everyone knew the whole story,
though Mrs. Gaskell made too much of it. Brussels was the
turning-point in Charlotte's career, and, had it not been for her
residence with the Hegers, there is no reason to suppose we
should have heard anything of the Bronte novels. Whilst at
Brussels, Charlotte Bronte found sufficient material for all the
heroes of her stories, and during the long sleepless nights,
which Mrs. Gaskell mentions, she was wrestling with that
experience which had caused her to leave Brussels. The
tears she shed at parting, and her weeping during those long
nights after Brussels had some meaning. Mrs. Gaskell tells
us, " Both M. and Madame Heger agreed that it would be for
the best, when they learnt only that part of the case which
she could reveal to them — namely, Mr. Bronte's increasing
blindness. But as the inevitable moment of separation from
people and places, among which she had spent so many happy
hours, drew near, her spirits gave way ; she had the natural
presentiment that she saw them all for the last time, and she
received but a dead kind of comfort from being reminded by
her friends that Brussels and Ha worth were not so far apart ;

248 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Rebellious now to blank inertion,
My unused strength demands a task ;

Travel, and toil, and full exertion
Are the last, only boon I ask.

The very wildness of my sorrow

Tells me I yet have innate force ;
My track of life has been too narrow,

Effort shall trace a broader course.

He, when he left me, went a-roving

To sunny climes beyond the sea ,
And I, the weight of woe removing,

Am free and fetterless as he.

New scenes, new language, skies less clouded,
May once more wake the wish to live ;

Strange foreign towns, astir and crowded,
New pictures to the mind may give.

New forms and faces, passing ever,

May hide the one I still retain,
Denned and fixed, and fading never,

Stamped deep on vision, heart and brain."

In a poem written in 1844 and recently published in The
Globe appears an earlier version of the above.
One verse reads —

" Devoid of charm how could I dream
My unasked love would e'er return ;
What fate, what influence lit the flame
I still feel inly, deeply burn ? "

And the last verse gives the true reason why Charlotte Bronte
left Brussels —

" HaVe I not fled that I may conquer ?
Crost the dark sea in firmest faith ;
That I at last might plant my anchor
Where love cannot prevail to death ? "

Frances in The Professor 'is loved by her teacher, William
Crimsworth, as Charlotte Bronte took the place of the teacher.
Years afterwards, in conversation with an English lady,

POEM BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE 247

Who can for ever crush the heart,

Restrain its throbbing, curb its life ?
Dissemble truth with ceaseless art,

With outward calm mask inward strife ?

For me the universe is dumb,

Stone-deaf, and blank, and wholly blind ;
Life I must bound, existence sum

In the strait limits of one mind ;

And when it falls, and when I die,
What follows ? Vacant nothingness ?

The blank of lost identity ?

Erasure both of pain and bliss ?

And when thy opening eyes shall see

Mementos on the chamber wall,
Of one who has forgotten thee,

Shed not one tear of acrid gall.

The tear which, welling from the heart,
Burns where its drop corrosive falls,

And makes each nerve in torture start,
At feelings it too well recalls :

These I have drunk, and they for ever
Have poisoned life and love for me ;

A draught from Sodom's lake could never
More fiery, salt, and bitter be.

Oh ! Love was all a thin illusion ;

Joy but the desert's flying stream ;
And glancing back on long delusion,

My memory grasps a hollow dream.

Vain as the passing gale, my crying ;

Though lightning struck, I must live on ;
I know at heart there is no dying

Of love, and ruined hope, alone.

Still strong and young, and warm with vigour.

Though scathed, I long shall greenly grow ;
And many a storm of wildest rigour

Shall yet break o'er my shivered bough.

248 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Rebellious now to blank inertion,
My unused strength demands a task ;

Travel, and toil, and full exertion
Are the last, only boon I ask.

The very wildness of my sorrow

Tells me I yet have innate force ;
My track of life has been too narrow,

Effort shall trace a broader course.

He, when he left me, went a-roving

To sunny climes beyond the sea ,
And I, the weight of woe removing,

Am free and fetterless as he.

New scenes, new language, skies less clouded,
May once more wake the wish to live ;

Strange foreign towns, astir and crowded,
New pictures to the mind may give.

New forms and faces, passing ever,

May hide the one I still retain,
Denned and fixed, and fading never,

Stamped deep on vision, heart and brain."

In a poem written in 1844 and recently published in The
Globe appears an earlier version of the above.
One verse reads —

" Devoid of charm how could I dream
My unasked love would e'er return ;
What fate, what influence lit the flame
I still feel inly, deeply burn ? "

And the last verse gives the true reason why Charlotte Bronte
left Brussels —

" Have I not fled that I may conquer ?
Crost the dark sea in firmest faith ;
That I at last might plant my anchor
Where love cannot prevail to death ? "

Frances in The Professor 'is loved by her teacher, William
Crimsworth, as Charlotte Bronte took the place of the teacher.
Years afterwards, in conversation with an English lady,

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S MORAL FORCE 249

M. Heger stated that he liked his little English pupil (Charlotte
Bronte") but she had a warmer feeling for him.

Mrs. Gaskell was evidently puzzled, and if she had dis-
covered that Bran well's conduct, and Mr. Bronte's increasing
blindness had nothing whatever to do with Charlotte's sudden
return from Brussels, she would have been more mystified.
Evidently Ellen Nussey could not help her to solve the mystery,
and knowing that Mary Taylor corresponded frequently with
Charlotte Bronte" Mrs. Gaskell wrote to her in New Zealand.
The reply did not help to solve the question. If she had only
compared the dates of Ellen Nussey 's letters, she would
have seen how impossible it was to blame Branwell. It is
probable that no character in literature has been made to suffer
more for supposed misdeeds than Branwell Bronte". Whatever
was wrong in the Bronte household or the Bronte novels has
generally been attributed to him, but he was more sinned
against than sinning. Charlotte was not free from blame,
for she could have kept his name out of her letters to Mr.
Williams, and to Ellen Nussey. Emily would have scorned to
write of him in such an unsisterly way, and, if she did tell
Charlotte he was " a hopeless being," it was Charlotte who
wrote of him as such. Moreover, the interpretation that Emily
put upon the word " hopeless " possibly meant that he himself
had no hope.

This leaving Brussels for her home proved the greatest
trial of her life, and there is abundant evidence in her works
of the moral force which she had to command in order to carry
out her intention. In The Professor, which it is well to remem-
ber was written under some restraint, and before Jane Eyre,
the account given by William Crimsworth of his leaving a
school kept by Mdlle Zoraide Reuter is portrayed in language
which does not easily or suitably fit in with the story ; and
yet Charlotte Bronte" seems compelled to write it, as the
remembrance of leaving Brussels was evidently still rankling
in her mind. William Crimsworth was undoubtedly Charlotte
Bronte" writing under a man's name, which puzzled Mr.
Williams when he was reading the MS., so Mr. Watts-Dun ton
tells us. The Professor is so different from Jane Eyre, that

250 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

the only solution seems to be that the first draft of it was
written before she discovered her feelings towards M. Heger.
This is clearly seen when " her " is changed to " his."

" Her present demeanour towards me was deficient neither
in dignity nor propriety ; but I knew her former feeling was
unchanged. Decorum now repressed, and Policy masked it,
but Opportunity would be too strong for either of these —
Temptation would shiver their restraints.

" I was no pope — I could not boast infallibility ; in short,
if I stayed, the probability was that, in three months' time,
a practical modern French novel would be in full process of
concoction under the roof of the unsuspecting Pelet. Now,
modern French novels are not to my taste, either practically or
theoretically. Limited as had yet been my experience of life,
I had once had the opportunity of contemplating, near at hand,
an example of the results produced by a course of interesting
and romantic domestic treachery. No golden tale of fiction
was about this example ; I saw it bare and real ; and it was
very loathsome. I saw a mind degraded by the practice of
mean subterfuge, by the habit of perfidious deception, and a
body depraved by the infectious influence of the vice-polluted
soul. I had suffered much from the forced and prolonged
view of this spectacle ; those sufferings I did not now regret,
for their simple recollection acted as a most wholesome antidote
to temptation. They had inscribed on my reason the con-
viction that unlawful pleasure, trenching on another's rights,
is delusive and envenomed pleasure — its hollowness disappoints
at the time, its poison cruelly tortures afterwards, its effects
deprave for ever.

" From all this resulted the conclusion that I must leave
Pelet's, and that instantly ; ' but,' said Prudence, * you know
not where to go, nor how to live.' ". . . .

" My hopes to win and possess, my resolutions to work and
rise, rose in array against me ; and here I was about to plunge
into the gulf of absolute destitution ; ' and all this,' suggested
em inward voice, ' because you fear an evil which may never
happen ! ' * It will happen ; you know it will,' answered that
stubborn monitor, conscience. * Do what you feel is right ;

-ROMANTIC TREACHERY' 251

obey me, and even in the sloughs of want I will plant for you
firm footing.' '

This is another version of Jane Eyre leaving Thornfield,
but it has been added to The Professor, and it is not in keeping.

The reference to a course of "interesting, romantic treachery,"
which Charlotte Bronte says she saw " near at hand," has been
attributed by previous writers to a Branwell Bronte's escapade
at Thorpe Green. Even Francis Leyland, who wrote such a
warm defence of this ill-fated brother of the Brontes, came
to the same conclusion. Trying to excuse Charlotte Bronte
he says, " It is probable that Charlotte would not have wished
this passage to be applied literally to her brother, but un-
fortunately this and similar unguarded declarations have
largely biassed almost all who have written on the lives and
literature of the Bronte sisters." The reference, however,
is not to Branwell, for when Charlotte left Brussels Branwell
was doing well at Thorpe Green, but to a sad case of domestic
treachery in Haworth, which Mrs Gaskell gives in the first
and second editions of her Life of Charlotte Bronte, and which
was deleted in the third edition because it gave great pain to
the members of the family concerned. The account tells of a
Yorkshire manufacturer betraying his young sister-in-law,
during his wife's illness, and of the sad suffering of the poor
girl. Mrs. Gaskell stated that " The family was accursed ;
they failed in business or they failed in health."

Between the time when Charlotte Bronte gave in her resig-
nation in October, 1843, to Madame Heger, and her leaving
Brussels at the end of the year, Madame Heger's fifth child
was born, on 5th November, 1843. In giving the account of
leaving Brussels in Jane Eyre, the heroine says, " May you
never appeal to heaven in prayer so hopeless and so agonised
as in that hour left my lips, for never may you, like me, dread
to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love." Char-
lotte's grief and weak health affected her reasoning powers
at this time, and M. Heger's pity was misconstrued.

Having discussed Madame Heger's methods with some of
her former pupils, I heard nothing but praise concerning her ;
all testified to her goodness of heart, and think of her with

252 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

reverence. Now that they are sufficiently old to look with
matronly eyes on her cautious ways, they understand and
appreciate her careful scrutiny, for as one of her old pupils —
an Englishwoman and a Protestant, like Charlotte Bronte* —
said to me, " In a large school like Madame Heger's, one bad
girl might work a great deal of mischief ; however good their
credentials, they might undermine the characters of the
others. More than once before the Bronte's went to this
school, Madame Heger had been deceived by girls, and her one
anxiety was for the excellent reputation of her school."

Another former pupil, a Belgian, who had been at school
in the time of the Brontes, said, " Never was a kinder or more
motherly woman than Madame Heger. All her old pupils
loved her and, if she did correct us, it was always done kindly ;
she was never a spy, nor did she wish to pry into our affairs."

If two Belgian women of twenty-six and twenty-four years
of age had come over to an English boarding school in the
early Forties, they would probably have been treated with a
certain amount of suspicion, and might not have fared any
better than the Brontes did in Brussels. At Haworth, even
twenty-five years ago, new residents from another county
were stigmatised as foreigners. The Brontes were so much
older than the other pupils, and consequently were more
difficult to deal with ; at their age they ought not to have
been pupils in any school. If Madame Heger took all means
possible to find out what she could about her two English
boarders, it was not necessarily to satisfy her own curiosity,
but to assure herself that they were not likely to be a source
of trouble in her management of the school ; she was only
following out what she had been accustomed to in her own
school life. She was an experienced and successful school-
mistress, and she had sufficient knowledge of human nature to
know that all girls are not above suspicion. She had had too
many girls in her school to be willing to trust the Brontes
implicitly before she had some definite grounds to build upon,
and it was her boast that girls found it difficult to deceive her.
To some extent, she had a preference for English girls, for she
chose an English nurse for her children, and she admitted to

MADAME HEGER

On her golden wedding day, September 3, 1886

VILLETTE 253

Charlotte Bronte that Belgian girls could not be treated with
the same amount of confidence as was reposed in pupils in an
English boarding school.

In the portrait of Madame Heger which I am allowed to
publish, taken on the day of her golden wedding, there is no
indication of the craftiness which Charlotte Bronte ascribed
to her. Her children loved her passionately, and to this day
they reverence her memory as something very precious, and
feel extremely hurt that their mother should have been por-
trayed in a novel with their native city as a setting. Belgians
generally resent Charlotte Bronte's criticism, not only of the
Heger family, but of the Belgian people. " Base ingratitude,"
" cruel " and " wicked " are some of the words which are
hurled at the writer of Villette, even to-day. Mademoiselle
Louise Heger, the third daughter of the family, who figures
in Villette as Georgette, was a general favourite with the pupils
at the pensionnat, and was nursed by Lucy Snowe, of whom
she had pleasant thoughts, but she was only four and a half
when Charlotte left Brussels. Another sister, still living,
is Mademoiselle Claire the third daughter ; she was a child of
three and a half when Charlotte left.

Mdlle Claire appears in Villette as Fifini Beck. " It was
an honest, gleeful little soul," and a favourite with Lucy
Snowe. Mademoiselle Marie, the eldest daughter, who died
2nd March, 1886, aged forty-nine, was immortalised by Char-
lotte Bronte' as Desiree ; she was six years old when Charlotte
left Brussels. " This was a vicious child. Quelle peste que
eette De*sire*e ! Quel poison que cet enfant-la ! " were the
expressions used to describe her, both in the kitchen and the
schoolroom. One can only be sorry that Charlotte wrote
this. She certainly did not love all children.

It is difficult to say whether Madame Heger was influenced
by the publication of Villette ; she gave up the school some
years afterwards to her daughters, and merely acted as the
house-mother, treating the girls with much consideration.
One of her old pupils told the writer that while at the school
she wrote some poetry, which she proudly showed to Madame
Heger, thinking she would be pleased, but when she read it,

254 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

she was very grieved, because she despised what was in any
way sentimental, having no love for poetry. Almost with
tears in her eyes, and putting her hands on the girl's shoulders,
she said, " Don't dear ! don't write poetry ; that is not a
girl's work, and will not add to her usefulness as a woman."

It would probably not be an advantage to the Brontes
in the eyes of the practical Madame Heger if she discovered
that they were interested in poetry and actually wrote poems.
Emily wrote a poem whilst in Brussels, judging by the date
given. This former pupil also remarked that there was some
reason for the allee def endue ; it was a part of the grounds
forbidden to the pupils because there was a boys' playground
just beyond the clump of trees at the end of the alley, and
naturally Madame Heger could not allow communications to
pass between the girls of her school and the boys of the Athenee
Royal. Referring to Madame Heger as a spy, this pupil
said she was never that, she wore soft slippers, and sometimes
would examine the girls' drawers and boxes, but where was
the harm among a lot of school girls ?

It is always said in excuse for Charlotte Bronte, that she
particularly wished Villette to be published under a nom de
guerre, probably a new one, for it was well known in the literary
world before Villette was issued that Currer Bell and Charlotte
Bronte were one and the same ; but Mr. George Smith, the
publisher of all Charlotte Bronte's novels, had an eye to business,
and he explained to her that the tale would have a much
greater sale if it were issued as by the author of Jane Eyre,
which had made such a name for the writer. Charlotte Bronte
yielded, though reluctantly, but she only gave way on one
condition, that on the title page should be printed, " The
right of translation is reserved " ; she thought that if the novel
was not translated into French the Hegers would not get it,
thereby proving that she had written something which she
did not wish them to know. She knew little of the world,
however, to think that such a shallow precaution would
prevent the novel crossing the North Sea, to the scene of its
originals. If Madame Heger was not very proficient in English,
her husband was a fairly good English scholar, some of the

VILLETTE IDENTIFIED 255

ability in this being due to Charlotte Bronte herself. Madame
Heger also employed an English nurse, and English girls
were received at the school. The children of Madame Heger
also became good English scholars, and in later days Villette
came into their hands. It was not long before the persons,
on whom the characters in Villette were based, were recognised.
Quite recently a former Belgian pupil, who was at the
pensionnat with the Brontes, showed me a copy of Villette
which she had purchased in 1853. She did not know at the
time that it referred to her old school, but she was both amused
and indignant when she discovered that it had been written
by a former class-mate and pupil of the school. Having
heard both Emily's and Charlotte's devoirs read out in class,
she said she was hardly surprised to know they had written
books, but very surprised at the tone of Villette. It has been
said that on the publication of Villette Madame Heger refused
to admit further English pupils, but that is not true. The
number of English pupils, however, did diminish for a time,
and few English parents were willing to send their daughters
to the school, though there were only six English girls there
besides the Brontes in 1843.

Some years later, one girl whilst at the pensionnat, unknown
to the teachers, obtained a copy of Villette to read, and became
so terrified about the ghost story of the nun (for unfortunately
she did not finish the novel) that she ran away from school,
and could not be persuaded to return. Whatever precautions
were taken, it was inevitable that the secret could not long be
maintained, and both Madame Heger's reputation and her
school suffered to some extent in consequence.

The late Abbe" Richardson, with whom I had an interview
in July, 1910, and again on 27th July, 1913, kindly per-
mitted me to quote from an unpublished lecture which he
delivered on " The Brontes in Brussels " on 26th February,
1901, in the old Ravenstein Hall overlooking the Rue d'Isabelle.
Mr. Richardson, though an Englishman and a great admirer
of Charlotte Bronte, felt it necessary to defend the Hegers.

"And now let us turn to M. Heger. We may at once
dismiss the idea that the objectionable M. Pelet (in The

256 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Professor) was in any way inspired or suggested by the person
of her beloved Professor, about whom she always wrote and
spoke with affectionate respect. But with regard to the
character of M. Paul Emanuel in Villette, the case is quite
different. Anyone who reads attentively this remarkable
novel cannot fail to have a sort of intuitive certainty that this
carefully drawn character, without of course being a portrait,
was nevertheless inspired by some person well known to the
author ; by a person who had made a very strong and very
profound impression on the author, and even by a person
who had excited in the author a deep and very real love. The
word is not too strong. Whoever the prototype of Paul
Emanuel was, Charlotte Bronte had loved him with all the
passionate energy of her warm, if suppressed affections.
Supposing this prototype to have been, as I have little doubt
it was, M. Heger, there is nothing in the least discreditable to
Charlotte Bronte's memory. We are none of us masters of
our heart's sympathies, and no one who has studied our
authoress, who was purity itself, can imagine that her enthu-
siastic and even passionate attachment to her master in litera-
ture was tainted or disfigured by the shadow of any attempt
or desire to draw to herself affections which were pledged
elsewhere. It comes simply to this : her love and affection
had been excited by intercourse with a singularly beautiful
and sympathetic nature, and she thought her genius had the
right to idealize these qualities, and to create from them a
hero, who gained the heart of an ideal heroine singularly
like herself. I do not think we can deny her this right, although
we may think that in this particular case she did not use
sufficient tact in exercising it. However this may be, it is
impossible for anyone who knew M. Heger not to recognise
many traits of his amiable character in the person, ' Us
faits et gistes ' of M. Paul Emanuel. Both Swinburne and
Wemyss Reid declare that Charlotte Bronte's sojourn at
Brussels was the turning-point in her career, and that her
affection for M. Heger was, as it were, a match which set fire
to the mine represented by the hidden and latent talents of
this half educated country girl of genius."

TESTIMONY OF PUPILS 257

That Charlotte Bronte thoroughly enjoyed her lessons with
M. Heger is easy to understand, because she could enter into
the spirit of his enthusiasm and she did not mind hard work,
though all his pupils were not of the same opinion. I once
asked a former English pupil her opinion of M. Heger, and she
gave it quite spontaneously. " I did not like him ; he was an
irritable, stern man, very unjust, and not at all the man to have
the care of girls ; he was very proud of any clever pupils, who
could understand and enter into his views and appreciations
of an author ; he was an excellent lecturer, but very angry if
his pupils could not follow him." " Once," said my informant,
" when I failed to grasp the meaning of a passage from Racine,
he became very angry and I turned on him and said, ' If I
were reading a passage in English from Shakespeare, and
you failed to grasp the beauty of it, I should not turn on you
and get into a temper.' Feeling the justice of this he said no
more."

In discussing Charlotte Bronte's opinion of Belgian girls with
this former pupil she attributed it to the fact that M. Heger
was so hard on the ordinary Belgian girl. He was more suited
to boys, she thought, than girls, and to clever pupils rather
than to those of average ability. In his defence, she was
willing to admit that M. Heger was a man of genius, and often
most kind to his pupils. She remembered seeing him standing
before a class of girls — who were terribly afraid of him —
shaking with rage because he could not make them compre-
hend his meaning, or enter into his enthusiastic appreciation
of the book under discussion. Finally, he burst into tears,
and left the room abruptly, much to the surprise, but also to
the relief of his pupils.

" Never was a better little man, in some points, than M.
Paul ; never in others a more waspish little despot," said
Charlotte Bronte, and her first impression of him as given in
Villette compares very well with that of his other pupils.

The late Abbe" Richardson, whilst agreeing to a certain extent
with Charlotte Bronte's picture of M. Heger in Villette, did not
think that Madame Heger had much resemblance to Madame
Beck in Villette and Mademoiselle Reuter in The Professor.

I7—(MOO)

258 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

" Madame Heger, the directress of the boarding-school known
to the Brontes, was utterly unlike either Mademoiselle Reuter
[in The Professor] or Madame Beck. If we except some super-
ficial resemblances of personal prettiness and neatness, noise-
lessness of movement, and unvarying placidity of temper,
this lady was utterly unlike in every particular the crafty
and unprincipled woman described by Charlotte Bronte, nor
is it possible to imagine that our authoress ever intended any
such resemblance. . . My intimate conviction is that in
Mdlle. Reuter and Madame Beck, Charlotte Bronte had not
the slightest intention of representing Madame Heger's
character, but it is quite possible that the slight superficial
personal traits of resemblance to this good lady which she
has reproduced in her very objectionable characters were
put in de propos delibere. Charlotte, with all her genius, was
not above a certain spitefulness. She never forgot any real,
or supposed injury, and both in Shirley and in Jane Eyre she
gives several coups de pattes, as the French say, some very
well deserved, to persons who had offended her or her sister.'*

M. Heger was very much offended if any one asked him
about Villette ; he characterised it as bien vilain for Miss
Bronte to have written of her Brussels friends in that way,
though he was quite prepared to acknowledge the genius of
the novel.

In trying to show his appreciation of Charlotte Bronte's
genius, he said to an English friend, who sympathised with
the Hegers because of the account in Villette, " Mais, c'est le
meilleur vin qui fait le vinaigre le plus acide."

" M. Heger was very fond of summing up his opinions in a
choice phrase, often of his own making," said one who knew
him well.

CHAPTER XX

WHY CHARLOTTE BRONTE LEFT BRUSSELS SO ABRUPTLY

WRITING to Ellen Nussey soon after leaving Brussels for the
second time, Charlotte says, " Something in me, which used
to be enthusiasm, is tamed down and broken. I have fewer
illusions ; what I wish for now is active exertion — a stake in
life. Ha worth seems such a lonely, quiet spot, buried away
from the world." Evidently the year at home was neither
happy nor peaceful, and yet Anne and Branwell were doing
well at Thorpe Green, and Emily was content at home. The
father, also, who was sixty-seven years of age, was in good
health. It has been said that her father's increasing blindness
caused Charlotte to give up her work at Brussels. Mary
Taylor says, " When I last saw Charlotte (a year after her
return from Brussels) she told me she had quite decided to
stay at home. She owned she did not like it. Her health

was weak I told her very warmly, that she ought not

to stay at home ; that to spend the next five years at home
in solitude and weak health would ruin her ; that she would
never recover it. Such a dark shadow came over her face
when I said, ' Think of what you'll be five years hence ! ' that
I stopped and said, c Don't cry, Charlotte ! ' She did not cry,
but went on walking up and down the room, and said in a
little while, ' But I intend to stay, Polly.' "

Again Charlotte Bronte writes : " There was a time when
Haworth was a very pleasant place to me ; it is not so now.
I feel as if we were all buried here. I long to travel ; to work ;
to live a life of action."

259

260 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

All this proves that the lack of " happiness and peace "
after her return from Brussels was in herself, and not in her
home. If her reason for leaving Brussels had been anxiety
for her father, she would have found happiness and peace in
attending to his wants, and the company of Emily ought to
have prevented her from complaining of solitude. Moreover,
if she found that she was doing what her conscience approved,
she would surely have had a measure of contentment, and not
have experienced " total withdrawal of happiness and peace of
mind."

Mrs. Gaskell seems to have been, on more than one occasion,
on the verge of tracking Charlotte Bronte's love story, but,
whatever conclusions were formed personally, she left the
matter for speculation by her readers, seeing that Jane Eyre was
first published as an autobiography, edited by Currer Bell. A
close acquaintance with Charlotte Bronte's life shows that the
story was largely her own experience, though fictitious names
are introduced. The sequence of events runs parallel with
Charlotte Bronte's life, and the more that life is examined
the closer it agrees with the life portrayed in Jane Eyre : the
death of her mother, which left her in charge of her aunt, whom
she did not love : the decision to send her to school at Lowood :
her appointment as teacher, though at another school : her
visit to Brussels, which, for obvious reasons is " Thornfield,"
where Jane Eyre was a governess, though instead of having a
class she had charge of one pupil : her friendship with " the
master," the title by which M. Heger became known to her :
the dangerous position which this friendship soon assumed :
Charlotte Bronte's departure from Brussels, because of her
aunt's death, just as Jane Eyre left Thornfield : her return
to the impatient master : his kindly welcome and her delight
in returning : the danger period when she finds a reason for
her joy on returning to Thornfield : the flight from Thorn-
field, which is the most dramatic part of the story, and which
Charlotte Bronte told Mrs. Gaskell was the part that appeal*
to her most when writing the novel. " When she came t<

* Thornfield ' she could not stop on she went writing

incessantly for three weeks ; by which time she had carried

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S LOVE STORY 261

her heroine away from c Thornfield ' and was herself in a fever
which compelled her to pause." After Thornfield comes Morton
and Charlotte Bronte's visit to Hathersage and her return to her
blind father at Ha worth. It is on the strength of the passionate
love story in Jane Eyre and Villette that Charlotte Bronte's
fame stands.

Miss Sinclair does not believe that Charlotte Bronte's life
is revealed in her novels, and she remarks that, if Jane Eyre
and Lucy Snowe are to stand for Charlotte Bronte, then Mrs.
Humphry Ward may be said to be the prototype of her
heroine, " Eleanor," and by that mischievous arrangement no
novelist is safe ; but in opposition to this view, it must be
remembered that Charlotte Bronte' and Mrs. Humphry Ward
are two very different novelists, standing on two different
planes. No one has ever assumed that Mrs. Humphry Ward's
characters are in any way a reflection of her own life. Charlotte
Bronte wrote of what she had experienced, whilst Mrs.
Humphry Ward draws mainly upon her imagination and
observation. If Charlotte Bronte's heroines are creations,
they follow closely real personages.

Mrs. Gaskell was so much baffled by Charlotte Bronte's
stories, that she once asked her if she ever took opium, as
depicted in Villette; Mrs. Gaskell evidently wondered if this
would give the clue.

It has been argued that the incident of Jane Eyre hearing
Rochester's voice was copied from Moll Flanders, but there is
no evidence that Charlotte Bronte had read Defoe's novel.

It has been repeatedly said that Charlotte Bronte never
expressed anything more than friendship for M. Heger : if
that had been so, she would never have given the soul-stirring
love scenes in her novels. When Harriet Martineau, at
Charlotte Bronte's request, candidly criticised Villette, she
was so much hurt that she quietly severed the friendship,
which once seemed to her well worth keeping. Harriet
Martineau's review in the Daily News of 3rd February, 1853,
is long and intensely critical, and its aim seems to be that
of literary adviser. Seeing that Charlotte Bronte" had published
three novels, and that Miss Martineau had only published

262 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Deerbrook and had submitted another novel to Messrs. Smith
Eider, which they refused, the role she adopted was, to say
the least, anything but kind, especially as she professed to be
a friend of Currer Bell.

Miss Martineau begins by saying, " Everything written by
Currer Bell is remarkable, she can touch nothing without
leaving on it the stamp of originality."

Thus with regard to the characters she writes —

" All the female characters, in all their thoughts and lives,
are full of one thing, or are regarded by the reader in the light
of that one thought — love. It begins with the child of six
years old, at the opening — a charming picture — and it closes
with it at the last page : and, so dominant is this idea — so
incessant is the writer's tendency to describe the need of being
loved, that the heroine, who tells her own story, leaves the
reader at last under the uncomfortable impression of her
either having entertained a double love, or allowed one to
supersede another without notification of the transition.
It is not thus in real life. There are substantial, heartful
interests for women of all ages, and under ordinary circum-
stances, quite apart from love ; there is an absence of intro-
spection, an unconsciousness, a repose in women's lives — unless
under peculiarly unfortunate circumstances — of which we
find no admission in this book : and to the absence of it may be
attributed some of the criticism which the book will meet with
from readers who are no prudes, but whose reason and taste
will reject the assumption that events and characters are to be
regarded through the medium of one passion only."

In the reply, Charlotte Bronte says : " I know what love is
as I understand it ; and if man or woman should be ashamed
of feeling such love, then is there nothing right, noble, faithful,
truthful, unselfish in this earth, as I comprehend rectitude,
nobleness, fidelity, truth and disinterestedness." If we
take this standard in connection with the love of a woman for
another woman's husband, it sounds far too bold, but it must
be remembered that Charlotte Bronte found her heart's secret
when it was too late, and, though she fled, she had her battle

CHARLOTTE'S CONCEPTION OF LOVE 263

to fight, for her conception of love was not merely the love of a
woman for a man, but of the knitting of one soul to another.
In answer to Shirley's question about love, Caroline, who is
more Charlotte Bronte than matter-of-fact Ellen Nussey,
replies, " Love, a crime ! No, Shirley : — love is a divine
virtue . . . obtrusiveness is a crime ; forwardness is a crime ;
and both disgust : but love ! — no purest angel need blush to
love ! And when I see either man or woman couple shame with
love, I know their minds are coarse, their associations
debased."

All her novels are human documents, and they contain the
very life-blood of the writer, and that is why they have made
the name of Bronte immortal. Harriet Martineau, writing
in the Daily News on 6th April, 1856, after Charlotte Bronte's
death, said : " Charlotte Bronte had every inducement that
could have availed with one less high-minded to publish two or
three novels a year. Fame waited upon all she did, and she
might have enriched herself by very slight exertion, but her
steady conviction was, that the publication of a book is a
solemn act of conscience, in the case of a novel as much as
any other book. She was not fond of speaking of herself
and her conscience, but she now and then uttered to her very
few friends things which may, alas ! be told now, without fear
of hurting her sensitive nature ; things which ought to be
told in her honour. Among these sayings was one which
explains the long interval between her works. She said that
she thought every delineation of life ought to be the product
of personal experience and observation ; experience naturally
occurring, and observation of a normal and not of a forced
or special kind. ' I have not accumulated since I published
Shirley? she said, ' what makes it needful for me to speak
again, and till I do, may God give me Grace to be dumb.' '

With regard to Charlotte Bronte's statement that she had
not accumulated since Shirley, it may be asked, " What about
Shirley's successor, Villette ? " It must be remembered that
she had written a novel, The Professor, dealing with the Brus-
sels life of Emily and herself, before she wrote Jane Eyre, and,
after she had made her name as a writer, she had hoped that

264 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. would publish it. It was at a
later period that she wrote Villette — a much greater novel than
The Professor, and dealing more fully with her own life in
Belgium. Some of her experience, however, had been gained
before she wrote Shirley, and there is certain evidence that
suggests that Charlotte visited Brussels a third time. If the
Professor had been accepted in Charlotte Bronte's lifetime,
Villette might never have been written, and thus a great novel
would have been lost to the world, for her three novels deal
with all the places in which she lived, and, as The Professor was
rejected, there was thus room for a distinctly Brussels story.

Mr. Shorter, and more recently Miss May Sinclair, have
laboured hard to dismiss the idea that Charlotte Bronte"s
love scenes are founded on actual experience, but Mr. Shorter
stumbles twice in quoting the words written to Ellen Nussey
in 1846, which have been brought forward more than once to
prove that something happened in Charlotte Bronte's last year
at Brussels that caused her to write : " I returned to Brussels
after aunt's death against my conscience, prompted by what
then seemed an irresistible impulse. I was punished for my
selfish folly by a total withdrawal for more than two years
of happiness and peace of mind." In the Haworth Edition of
The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Mr. Shorter, in a foot-note on page
319, quotes this passage, but he substitutes the words total
hindrance for total withdrawal ; and in The Brontes : Life and
Letters, page 255, Vol. I, he again quotes the passage, but leaves
out the word total. His reason for quoting in the last instance
is to explain that Miss Nussey and Mr. Nicholls interpreted
the passage to mean that Charlotte Bronte had left "her
father to over-conviviality," and " her brother took some
further steps towards the precipice over which he was destined
to fall." That Branwell had nothing to do with Charlotte's
return I have, I hope, proved.

With regard to her novels being human documents, Charlotte
Bronte settles the matter herself in a letter she wrote to Mr.
W. S. Williams in 1848, in which she discussed the characters
in her novels : " Details, situations which I do not understand
and cannot personally inspect, I would not for the world

LETTERS TO M. HEGER 265

meddle with, lest I should make even a more ridiculous mess
of the matter than Mrs. Trollope did in her Factory Boy.
Besides, not one feeling on any subject, public or private, will I
ever affect that I do not really experience"

Charlotte Bronte returned to Brussels in 1843 against her
conscience and against the wishes of her family and friends.
She lost rather than gained money by her decision, and both
she and Emily had borrowed money from Aunt Branwell to
enable them to study French and German in order to be
capable of starting a private school in England. Charlotte was
determined, impulsive, and to a certain extent wilful, but she
turned to good account her experience in Brussels ; she went
to Brussels to be trained for the profession of teaching, but she
was unconsciously trained for her role as novelist. All her
heroes are akin ; all have something of the foreigner about them
and have travelled and known more of the world than the
ordinary men — mostly curates — that Charlotte Bronte met.
She had only one model, and that was M. Heger. She told
her life story in her novels, and she was too genuine to hide the
tragic love passion that, unsought, entered into her life. Such
was her temperament that she could not help herself ; she
reverenced literary people who had great intellectual ability and
large-heartedness, and these qualities she found in M. Heger.

In the chapter in Shirley entitled " The first blue-stocking,"
where Miss Keeldar refuses to marry for money, her uncle
assures her that she has a preference for " any literary scrub or
shabby, whining artist," and she replies : " For the scrubby,
shabby, whining I have no taste ; for literature and arts I
have."

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S LETTERS TO M. HEGER

The four letters from Charlotte Bronte' to M. Heger, published
in The Times on 29th July, 1913, though announced as
" the lost letters of Charlotte Bronte," have, in fact, never
been lost. They were seen by Mrs. Gaskell in 1856, and M.
Heger remarked that she had made a very discreet use of them,
and he suggested that she should ask Mr. Nicholls or Mr.
Bronte for the letters he had sent to Charlotte Bronte', which

266 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

he was sure she had retained on account of the advice which
they contained. I have known where The Times' letters were
for many years, and have corresponded with the family as to
the advisability of publishing them.

Mrs. Gaskell seems never to have had an opportunity of
seeing the letters which M. Heger sent to Charlotte Bronte,
but, as previously stated, she knew more of Charlotte's heart
secret regarding M. Heger than she disclosed. If Mr. Nicholls
obtained possession of the letters from M. Heger, it is very
certain he would not wish to have them published ; indeed,
his policy throughout had been to ignore the Heger corre-
spondence, and hence his wish to give a reason for Charlotte
Bronte's return from Brussels in 1844, which has been proved
to be untrue.

The old Vicar was not in his daughter's confidence, and he
would not be likely to know anything of her correspondence ;
it is quite possible that she destroyed the letters herself. In
Chapter XXIII of Vittettc, Lucy Snowe teUs of five letters
" traced by the same firm pen, sealed with the same clear seal,
full of the same vital comfort. Vital comfort it seemed to
me then : I read them in after years ; they were kind letters
enough — pleasing letters, because composed by one well-
pleased ; in the two last there were three or four closing
lines half-gay, half-tender, ' by feeling touched, but not sub-
dued.' Time, dear reader, mellowed them to a beverage of
this mild quality ; but when I first tasted their elixir, fresh
from the fount so honoured, it seemed juice of a divine vintage :
a draught which Hebe might fill, and the very gods approve.

" Does the reader, remembering what was said some pages
back, care to ask how I answered these letters : whether
under the dry, stinting check of Reason, or according to the
full, liberal impulse of Feeling ?

"To speak truth, I compromised matters; I served two
masters ; I bowed down in the house of Rimmon, and lifted
the heart at another shrine. I wrote to these letters two
answers — one for my own relief, the other for Graham's
perusal." M. Heger was the original for certain phases of
Graham's or Dr. John's life.

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ANXIETY FOR LETTERS 267

In Chapter XXIV, headed " M. de Bassompierre," Charlotte
Bronte lays bare her thoughts at the time Lucy Snowe was
hungering for letters. She tells of studying hard at German
and reading " the driest and thickest books in the library "
in order to appease her anxiety for letters. She says " the
result was as if I had gnawed a file to satisfy hunger, or drank
brine to quench thirst."

" My hour of torment was the post hour. Unfortunately,
I knew it too well, and tried as vainly as assiduously to cheat
myself of that knowledge : dreading the rack of expectation,
and the sick collapse of disappointment which daily preceded

and followed upon that well-recognised ring The letter

— the well-beloved letter — would not come ; and it was all
of sweetness in life I had to look for."

Later in the chapter Lucy Snowe receives a letter from
" La Terrasse," which, for the time being is Brussels, and,
instead of coming from Dr. John, as she hoped, it was from
his mother. The disappointment is very graphically described,
and even in reading the chapter it is difficult to understand
why the writer should betray such agony at not receiving a
letter from Dr. John. After moralizing on her long starvation
from the want of letters she concludes, "In all the land of
Israel there was but one Saul — certainly but one David to
soothe or comprehend him."

M. Heger's name was Romain Constantin Georges Heger.
In Villette it is Paul Carl David Emanuel.

It is easy to see in the light of The Times letters that
Charlotte Bronte was suffering mentally, and she likens
herself to Saul and M. Heger to David, who was the only one
with power to soothe her.

Charlotte Bronte lived her life over again in her books. She
wrote Villette for the professor and told her innermost thoughts,
but she says in Villette, "I disclaim with the utmost scorn every
sneaking suspicion of what are called ' warmer feelings ' ;
women do not entertain these * warmer feelings ' where,
from the commencement, through the whole progress of an
acquaintance, they have never once been cheated of the
conviction that to do so would be to commit a mortal absurdity."

268 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

The name that she gives to her passion is " a closely clinging
and deeply honouring attachment — an attachment that wanted
to attach to itself and take to its own lot all that was painful
in the destiny of its object."

Regarding the letters that were sent she writes, " The doors
of my heart would shake, bolt and bar would yield. Reason
would leap in vigorous and revengeful, snatch the full sheets,
read, sneer, erase, tear up, re-write, fold, seal, direct, and send
a terse, curt missive of a page." This accounts for the differ-
ence between the letters and her books. All her life she had
been in love with an ideal, and to a greater extent, perhaps,
Emily had had a similar experience ; their early manuscripts
prove this.

For the time being, M. Heger was Charlotte's ideal, and,
although she calls her feelings by the name " friendship,"
she was in love with M. Heger, and she knew it, but she never
had any wish to draw his affection from his wife and children.
She had returned to Brussels a second time because she could
not help herself ; she lived for her master and she could not
bear her life without him, and if possible she would have
returned a third year.

Mr. Shorter thinks those letters with their heart-throbs are
very similar to Charlotte's letters to Mr. Williams. On the
one hand she was dying for letters from M. Heger, whilst she
closed her correspondence with Mr. Williams voluntarily.

It is well to remember that Charlotte Bronte was twenty-
eight, and M. Heger was thirty-five, when this correspondence
was going on, so that it could not be the ordinary schoolgirl
worship pictured by several writers. It was the passionate
attachment of a woman for a man a few years older than
herself. Well might Madame Heger object to this intellectual
woman of nearly thirty writing to her husband, who was
five years younger than herself, since she was at this time
forty years of age. It is affirmed that the writing in pencil
on one of Charlotte's letters, now in the British Museum,
proves that M. Heger had no interest in Charlotte, but the
writing is not that of M. Heger.

Judging from Villette (which, as more and more of Charlotte's

MARIE JOSEPHINE NOYER 289

life is revealed, proves to be autobiographical) it seems safe to
assume that M. Heger had told Charlotte something of his love
for his first wife, whose name was Marie Josephine Noyer ;
she died on 26th September, 1833, after three years of happy
married life.

The death of his young wife in 1833 was a terrible blow, and
almost overwhelmed him, and such was the depth of his
despair that it was feared he would lose his reason or his life.
In speaking to Lucy Snowe, Paul Emanuel says : " Don't
suppose that I wish you to have a passion for me, Mademoiselle ;
Dieu vous en garde ! What do you start for ? Because I said
passion ? Well, I say it again. There is such a word, and
there is such a thing — though not within these walls, thank
Heaven ! You are no child that one should not speak of what
exists ; but I only uttered the word — the thing, I assure you,
is alien to my whole life and views. It died in the past^— in
the present it lies buried — its grave is deep dug, well heaped,
and many winters old : in the future there will be a resur-
rection, as I believe to my soul's consolation ; but all will then
be changed — form and feeling : the mortal will have put on
immortality — it will rise, not for earth, but heaven."

This speech could hardly have been invented by Charlotte ;
it reads too closely to a real conversation ; and it is to this
romance that Wuthering Heights owes much. In the chapter
on Malevola, Lucy Snowe hears of Paul Emanuel's goodness
and charity to his lost love's relatives, and Pere Silas says of
his former pupil, Paul Emanuel, " He was and is the lover,
true, constant and eternal, of that saint in heaven — Marie
Justine" — the first Madame Heger's name was Marie Josephine,
and towards the end of the chapter, Madame Beck tells Lucy
Snowe that Paul Emanuel " harbours a romantic idea about
some pale-faced Marie Justine — personnage assez niaise a ce
que je pense " (such was Madame's irreverent remark) " who
has been an angel in heaven, or elsewhere, this score of years,
and to whom he means to go, free from all earthly ties, pure
comme un lis, a ce qu'il dit."

Again, " They, Pere Silas and Modeste Maria Beck, opened
up the adytum of his (Paul Emanuel's) heart — showed me one

270 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

grand love, the child of this southern nature's youth, born
so strong and perfect, that it had laughed at Death himself,
despised his mean rape of matter, clung to immortal spirit,
and, in victory and faith, had watched beside a tomb twenty
years."

In the third chapter of Wuthering Heights, Cathy wails,
" Let me in — let me in !

" It's twenty years, mourned the voice : twenty years.

I've been a waif for twenty years."

In Villette, Lucy Snowe says : " How often has this man,
this M. Emanuel, seemed to me to lack magnanimity in trifles,
yet how great he is in great things !

" I own I did not reckon amongst the proofs of his greatness
either the act of confession, or the saint- worship."

" How long is it since that lady died ? " I inquired, looking
at Justine Marie.

" Twenty years. She was somewhat older than M. Emanuel ;
he was then very young, for he is not much beyond forty."

" Does he yet weep her ? "

"His heart will weep her always : the essence of Emanuel' s
nature is — constancy."

This story of the early love of Paul Emanuel had some
connection with facts in M. Heger's life and it was the know-
ledge of his constancy to a lost love, that inspired both
Charlotte and Emily Bronte to write so passionately of him.

It was this early romance of Paul Emanuel, that was the
germ of the passionate love story in Wuthering Heights, Jane
Eyre, and Villette ; but in the writing of the story neither
Emily nor Charlotte had been able to keep herself from
representing the heroine, or from expressing her fierce
passionate nature.

It is unfortunate that only part of the correspondence
between M. Heger and Charlotte Bronte has been kept, for
it is quite certain there were other letters preceding the one
dated 24th July, 1844, in which Charlotte begins, " I am well
aware it is not my turn to write to you, but as Mrs. Wheel-
wright is going to Brussels it appears to me I ought

not to neglect so favourable an opportunity of writing to you."

1 ,' i '•; -

'.,• ;•'. ,, i

HAND-BAG WORKED BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE

Presented to Mrs. Wheelwright 1842

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND M. HEGER 271

Evidently letters had passed to and fro between M. Heger and
Charlotte, during the six months that she had been in England,
for she mentions having written " a letter that was less than
reasonable, because sorrow was at my heart " ; and again she
writes, " Meanwhile I may well send you a little letter from
time to time — you have authorised me to do so."

That Charlotte was perfectly open in her correspondence
with M. Heger is easily proved, for she does not hesitate to
let the Wheelwrights know that she is corresponding with him,
and her reason for sending the letter by Mrs. Wheelwright
was probably to save the postage of one and sixpence, and to
ensure its safe delivery, for she seems to have been suspicious
that the letters were not received by M. Heger.

Dr. Heger told me that Charlotte Bronte's letters to his
father had been too frequent, and they betrayed a growing
attachment which his parents thought it kind and wise to
check. She was told that her letters gave evidence of too much
excitement and exaltation, and she was advised to tone down
her letters and write merely of her health and occupation,
only giving particulars of her own health and that of her home
circle.

It is a mistake to say that this rebuff caused Charlotte
Bronte to give up writing to M. Heger ; that is not so ; she
mentions more than once the six months' interval, and it is
certain she tried to keep to the instructions imposed upon
her by M. and Madame Heger. Her last letter to M. Heger,
dated 18th November, which Dr. Heger (the son of M. Heger)
thinks belongs to 1844, certainly belonged to 1845, for in that
letter she says, " I have never heard French spoken but once
since I left Brussels — and then it sounded like music in my ears
—every word was most precious to me because it reminded
me of you." This is a reference to Charlotte Bronte's journey
from Hathersage to Ha worth in July, 1845, when she tells of
accosting a stranger in the railway carriage, and asking him
in French if he were not a Frenchman, and on hearing him
speak, she further asked if he had not lived in Germany. On
his replying in the affirmative, she said she knew it by his
way of pronouncing the words. M. Heger was of German

272 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

descent, and that may account for Charlotte saying, " Every
word was most precious to me because it reminded me of you,
I love French for your sake with all my heart and soul."

In the first letter published by The Times there is a reference
to a situation offered to Charlotte Bronte in a large school in
Manchester at a salary of one hundred pounds. This is the
first that has been heard of it, and it is very remarkable that
Ellen Nussey is not told of it, seeing that she was asked to
help to get pupils for Charlotte. Evidently old Mr. Bronte
objected to Charlotte leaving home again, for Anne mentions
Charlotte's wish to go to Paris, and she queries it. In The
Professor there is a reference to William Crimsworth obtaining
a situation at 3,000 francs a year, after leaving M. Pelet,
which may have some reference to the Manchester offer, but
Mrs. Gaskell did not seem to know of it, or she would have
surely mentioned it.

The letters betray Charlotte's anxiety to know if M. Heger
has received her letters, and she sends the second letter
(published in The Times) by Mr. Joe Taylor and his
sister Mary ; she evidently charged them to deliver it safely
to M. Heger, and to ask for an answer to bring back to
England.

This second letter is short, and eager, and poor Charlotte
waits feverishly for the answer.

" I am not going to write a long letter ; in the first place, I
have not the time — it must leave at once ; and then, I am afraid
of worrying you. I would only ask of you if you have heard
from me at the beginning of May and again in the month of
August ? For six months I have been awaiting a letter from
Monsieur — six months waiting is very long, you know ! How-
ever, I do not complain, and I shall be richly rewarded for a
little sorrow if you will now write a letter and give it to this
gentleman — or to his sister — who will hand it to me without
fail. . . .

" Farewell, Monsieur ; I am depending on soon having your
news. The idea delights me, for the remembrance of your !
kindnesses will never fade from my memory, and as long as j

HERO WORSHIP 273

that remembrance endures the respect with which it has
inspired me will endure likewise."

Mr. Taylor returns and brings no news. " Patience," says
Charlotte in her desperation, and she awaits Mary Taylor's
return. " I have nothing for you," she says, " neither letter
nor message."

It is impossible not to sympathize with this eager, passionate
little woman, in her hero worship, but no one can blame
Madame Heger for checking the correspondence ; it could
only lead to disappointment in the end. Certain it is that
Charlotte called it by the name of friendship, but the name
was not strong enough. For an independent woman like
Charlotte Bronte to write at least three letters to M. Heger,
then to send a letter by hand, and still to get no answer, and
then to write again " Forgive me then, Monsieur, if I adopt
the course of writing to you again. How can I endure life
if I make no effort to ease its sufferings ? . . All I know is,
that I cannot, that I will not, resign myself to lose wholly the
friendship of my master. I would rather suffer the greatest
physical pain than always have my heart lacerated by smarting
regrets. If my master withdraws his friendship from me
entirely, I shall be altogether without hope : if he gives me
a little — just a little — I shall be satisfied — happy ; I shall
have reason for living on, for working. . . Nor do I, either,
need much affection from those I love. I should not know
what to do with a friendship entire and complete — I am not
used to it. " And when she speaks of the " little interest "
the professor had in her of yore, she says : "I hold on to it as
I would hold on to life," and her piteous appeal is that of the
desperate lover begging for a word of hope, rather than that
of an unmarried woman of nearly thirty to a man of thirty-five,
who had a family of five children.

The fourth and last letter printed by The Times is dated
15th November, and for the reason just stated, it must have
been written in 1845.

Then, again, she mentions having suffered great anxiety
for a year or two, which plainly covered the period since she

l8 — (2200)

274 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

left Brussels on 29th December, 1843. This fourth letter
points to the fact that Charlotte had received a letter after her
piteous appeal, on finding that Joe and Mary Taylor had
nothing for her. The third letter is dated 8th January, 1845,
and yet Charlotte says on 18th November that her last letter
was dated 18th May, and it implies that a letter had been
sent from M. Heger between January and May, for she says :
;< Your last letter was stay and prop to me — nourishment to
me for half a year. Now I need another, and you will give it
me.". ... "To forbid me to write to you, to refuse to
answer me would be to tear from me my only joy on earth, to
deprive me of my last privilege — a privilege I shall never
consent willingly to surrender. Believe me, mon maUre, in
writing to me it is a good deed that you will do. So long as I
believe you are pleased with me, so long as I have hope of
receiving news from you, I can be at rest and not too sad. But
when a prolonged and gloomy silence seems to threaten me
with the estrangement of my master — when day by day I
await a letter, and when day by day disappointment comes to
fling me back into overwhelming sorrow, and the sweet delight
of seeing your handwriting and reading your counsel escapes
me as a vision that is vain, then fever claims me — I lose appetite
and sleep — I pine away." In conclusion, she asks, " May I
write to you again next May ? " proving that she was trying
to keep her promise of only writing once in six months.

These four letters only give a glimpse of the eager, passionate
correspondence sent by Charlotte Bronte to her master.

On the authority of the Heger family, the last letter was
addressed by Charlotte Bronte to the Athe*ne*e Royal of
Brussels, but it was not at the request of M. Heger, but because
Charlotte herself was eager to obtain an answer from him,
and she evidently was suspecting Madame Heger as the cause
of the delay in getting answers, for it is noticeable that in this
last letter Madame Heger is not mentioned at all, although
the governesses and the children are referred to by name.
This is inexcusable, and as far as is known no further letters
were sent.

M. Heger did not write his own letters, but dictated them^

M. PAUL EMANUEL 275

and his wife wrote them ; whilst later still, since his daughter
Louise was his amanuensis, M. Heger merely signed the letters
after altering certain phrases, and then a fair copy was made ;
but Charlotte Bronte in her last letter writes of the sweet
delight of seeing his (M. Heger's) handwriting, and as he cor-
rected her devoirs in his own characteristic caligraphy it is
certain she would be able to recognise it as distinct from
Madame Heger's, which was larger and firmer.

In Villette M. Paul Emanuel says, " I could not write that
down. ... I hate mechanical labour ; I hate to stoop and
sit still. I could dictate it, though, with pleasure to an
amanuensis who suited me."

The two years in Brussels, and the two succeeding years were
the ones which counted most in the writing of Charlotte's
novels, for in those four years she fought her hardest battle,
as her novels testify.

There are some who blame M. Heger for keeping the letters
of Charlotte Bronte, thinking they ought to have been destroyed,
so that they could never have been published, but it is well
to know M. Heger himself strongly objected to the letters
ever being published. He kept them for the same reason
that he kept Emily's and Charlotte's devoirs, " because he
had known the little geniuses," but he never had any intention
of publishing Charlotte's letters, as a letter to Ellen Nussey
proves.

Ellen Nussey was not satisfied with Mrs. Gaskell's Life of
Charlotte Bronte ; she thought it too sad, and she evidently
wished to adopt the role of biographer herself, and, if she could
have secured the help of M. Heger, a new phase of Charlotte's
life would be revealed, for Ellen Nussey did not understand the
Brussels period ; had she done so she would never have asked
M. Heger to publish Charlotte's letters.

A letter from M. Heger, written just fifty years ago,
redounds to his credit and his loyalty to Charlotte Bronte,
and it explains why Dr. Heger and his sisters have delayed
so long in allowing the letters to be published. Had it not been
that a dishonourable attachment had been hinted at by
pertain writers, they would never have allowed the letters to be

276 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

made public, knowing all these fifty years what their father's
wishes were. Here is the letter from M. Heger to Ellen Nussey,
published for the first time by kind permission of Dr. Heger
and his sisters.

"BRUXELLES, 16 Octobve, 1863.

" Mademoiselle,

" Deux mots expliqueront et me feront pardonner le retard
que j'ai mis a vous repondre : votre lettre ne rn'a pas trouve
a Spa ; je n'en ai pris connaissance qu'a mon retour des
vacances.

" Vous daignez me consulter sur trois points : 1= la publica-
tion de pres de 500 lettres de Charlotte Bronte, votre amie
2£ la traduction en frangais de cette correspondance 3i ma
participation eventuelle a cette traduction.

" M'expliquer sincerement sur ces trois points est a mes
yeux un devoir. Je crois comme vous, Mademoiselle, que
votre amie sera plus fidelement peinte par elle-meme que par
autrui ; je crois que ses lettres, ou 1'on voit le mouvement
intime de sa pensee, ou Ton sent les battements de ce pauvre
cceur malade, peuvent offrir encore un vif interet, meme
apres la biographic developpee de Madame Gaskell. Je suis
convaincu de cela, — et cependant il s'eleve du fond de ma
conscience certaines objections que je soumets humblement a
la v6tre.

" La question que je vais traiter est delicate ; j'hesite a
Tabor der, mais cette hesitation, que j'avoue, je la regarde
comme une faiblesse et je passe outre ; quelquechose me dit,
Mademoiselle, que ma sinc6rite ne saurait vous blesser : elle
n'est, en realite", qu'un hommage rendu a votre loyaute* et a
votre cceur.

" Je me suis done pose cette question : pourrais-je, sans
Passentiment de mon ami, publier ses lettres intimes, c'est a
dire les confidences qu'il m'a faites ? Ne m'a-t-il pas laisse
voir, de lui-meme, plus qu'il ne voulait montrer a autrui ?
ce qu'on m'aurait dit a voix basse pourrais-je le redire a haute
voix apres le depart de 1'imprudent ami qui s'est confi6 a ma
discretion ? ces impressions fugitives, ces appreciations
irr6fl6chies, jet^es, a cceur ouvert dans une causerie intime,

M. HEGER'S LETTER TO ELLEN NUSSEY 277

puis-je les livrer en pature a la curiosite" maligne des
lecteurs ?

" Je n'ai pas, Mademoiselle, la prevention de re"soudre pour
vous cette question : je vous crois trop de delicatesse pour
supposer qu'en pareille mati&re votre raison et votre cceur
aient besoin d'aide — Mais appelons-en a notre experience
personelle : il doit vous etre arrive" comme a moi, comme a
tout le monde, de retrouver apres plusieurs anne"es, le brouillon
de quelqu'une des lettres que nous avons e"crites, et certes
je crois pouvoir affirmer que ni vous ni moi nous ne les eussions
livre"es a la publicite sans modification aucune : tant I'exp6r-
ience, la maturite" que le temps donne a 1'esprit, avaient, en
bien des points, modifie' nos sentiments et nos idees.

" Votre pieuse affection veut, par la publication de la
correspondance de Charlotte, aj outer a la gloire, a la consid6ra-
tion de votre amie ; je le comprends ; mais permettez-moi de
vous mettre en garde centre vous m6me : en triant sa
correspondance, supposez toujours votre amie presente £
c6t6 de vous, et consultez-la.

Voila, Mademoiselle, sans reticence, ce que je pense de la
publication des lettres originales en anglais.

" Quant a la traduction en fran9ais, quel que soit le merite
du traducteur, il me parait que de toutes les ceuvres litte"raires
les lettres sont celles qui perdent le plus a etre traduites : dans
la correspondance intime 1'a propos, la liberte" de 1'allure, la
grace et jusqu'aux charmantes negligences d'une forme toute
spontane"e, donnent du prix, de l'agre"ment, aux moindres
choses ; dans la traduction tout cela disparait.

" Je ne sache pas qu'on ait songe" a traduire les lettres de
Madame de S6vigne"— pas plus qu'on n'a tente" de peindre
le vol ou de noter le chant de Toiseau.

" Certaines lettres resistent a la traduction, je le sais, parce
qu'elles traitent de politique, de voyages, de critique litte"raire,
etc. Elles ont un fonds solide d'une valeur r^elle, en quelque
sorte ind^pendante de la forme. Petit-etre les lettres de votre
amie sont-elles dans ce cas ; je 1'ignore, vous seule pouvez en
juger.

" Aprds avoir exprim^ mon opinion sur la traduction et

278 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

confesse implicitement ainsi mon impuissance a faire ce que
vous paraissez d6sirer de moi, je crois inutile d'aj outer qu'il me
serait impossible dans tous les cas, faute de loisir, de cooper er
a la publication dont vous avez pieusement rassemble" les
mate'riaux. Veuillez peser avec une indulgente bienveillance
les motifs de mon abstention et agreer, Mademoiselle, 1'hom-
mage de mes meilleurs sentiments.

" (Sign<§) C. HEGER."

It is interesting to note that when the rough draft of this
letter, which had been dictated by M. Heger to his daughter
Louise, was examined, it was seen that the word malade in the
phrase " de ce pauvre cceur malade " had been altered twice
into bless e, and then finally M. Heger had determined
to leave it as it now stands. Evidently he considered the
word blesse was more appropriate as applied to his former pupil's
poor wounded heart than malade, which word, however, was
perhaps more suited to a letter to be sent to Charlotte Bronte's
old friend Ellen Nussey.

The letter explains itself ; Ellen Nussey did not receive
one penny from Mrs. Gaskell for the loan of her 500 Bronte
letters, and she wished to get M. Heger to help her to write
a new biography of Charlotte Bronte, but his letter proves that
he was too honourable to publish this private correspondence.

If M. Heger's correspondence could have been kept and
published, it would have shown that his letters contained
nothing that was dishonourable, or he would not have advised
Mrs. Gaskell to ask to see them.

Readers of Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte will
remember that she quotes one long letter from Charlotte
Bronte to M. Heger and also a shorter passage. When the
four letters were published in The Times it was seen that the
impression of the correspondence between Charlotte Bronte*
and M. Heger intended by Mrs. Gaskell was quite erroneous.
As Mr. Spielmann, who conducted the correspondence between
the Hegers and the Principal Librarian of the British Museum,
pointed out. " Passages of quite minor interest have been
printed in that work ; but readers will be amazed to find

M. HEGER'S LOYALTY 279

that not only have they been corrected and furbished up as to
spelling and punctuation, and unimportant words omitted,
but that they have — inevitably no doubt, at that time, for the
biographer's peculiar purpose — been garbled in a manner
rare in a frankly and candidly-conceived narrative."

What appears to be one letter in Mrs. Gaskell's Life of
Charlotte Bronte is seen to consist of more or less unimportant
extracts carefully selected from the first two letters recently
published, and the second quotation is taken from an earlier
portion of the first of the four letters. Not only are there
important omissions, but the second letter especially consists
of a mere patchwork, which appears to preclude any explana-
tion on the ground of carelessness. Mrs^Gaskell must have
seen these letters, for in addition to the French quotations
there are statements which prove her knowledge of them.
Moreover, the manuscripts now in the British Museum must
have been seen by her, when in the keeping of the Hegers,
for Mr. Nicholls does not appear to have had them, but whoever
compiled the letters in Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Charlotte
Bronte must have been actuated by a desire to conceal the real
drift of the correspondence. The letters which were dated
24th July, 1844, and 24th October, 1844, appear in Mrs.
Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte as having been sent to M.
Heger subsequent to March, 1845, and after Charlotte Bronte's
visit to Hathersage, which would be impossible.

Her passionate longing to hear from M. Heger, and especially
to see him, cannot be dismissed — especially when the relative
ages are considered — as typical of a pupil's relations with her
former teacher. The feeling which she betrays is too intense
to be explained in that way, and only M. Heger 's recognition
of his duty to his wife and family, and the necessity of checking
Charlotte Bronte''s ardour, brought the correspondence to a
close.

CHAPTER XXI

THE ATTEMPT TO EARN A LIVELIHOOD

1844-1845

FAILURE of the East Riding scheme for a school — The Bronte sisters
determine to open a school at the Vicarage — The prospectus
— Causes of the failure of the project — They turn to litera-
ture as a means of livelihood — The Vicarage family — Charlotte
Bronte's invitation to Hathersage — Emily and Anne visit York —
The Gondal Chronicles — Hathersage and Jane Eyre — Marriage of
the Rev. Henry Nussey — Hathersage Village — Charlotte Bronte's
return to Haworth.

IN one of Charlotte Bronte's recently published letters in The
Times, 29th July, 1913, she mentions that, in the summer of
1844, she had been offered a situation as first governess in a
large school in Manchester, with a salary of £100 per annum,
but that she could not accept it, as it would have necessitated
leaving her father. This is the first time that anything has
been known of such an offer, and curiosity is aroused as to the
school in Manchester in which Charlotte had the chance of
becoming a governess. The Manchester High School for Girls
was not started until 1874 ; evidently the school referred to
must have been a boarding school in the neighbourhood of
Manchester, but it is somewhat strange that, in later years,
when Charlotte visited the Gaskells at Manchester, she does
not seem to have mentioned the offer, nor does the father
seem to have remembered it, when giving Mrs. Gaskell
particulars of his daughter's career.

Emily was at home at this time, and there were two servants,
so that it is curious that the father would not allow Charlotte
to go to Manchester, seeing there was the tempting offer
of £100 per annum, for some months later, according to Anne
Bronte's diary, Charlotte was trying to get to Paris as a
governess. In the light of the recently published letters,
Charlotte's health and despondency seem to be the real reason
why her father would not let her go ; probably he did not wish
his daughter to go away alone again, after the miserable state
in which she returned from Brussels.

280

THE SCHOOL CIRCULAR 281

Miss Bran well's death in 1842 made it impossible for the
three sisters to leave their father and start a school in the
East Riding of Yorkshire, as they had hoped to do, and the
only way in which they could collectively use their hard-earned
knowledge was by starting a school at Ha worth. After much
consideration and planning, a school circular was drawn up
and widely circulated in 1844 —

33ronte's

FOR

OF A LIMITED NUMBER OF

YOCINIQ (LftDCES,,
THE PARSONAGE, HA WORTH,

WBAJEt BBADFO&D.

.£. *. d.

BOARD AND EDUCATION, including Writing, Arithmetic, His-
tory, Grammar, Geography, and Needle Work, perj. 35 0 0
Anmim,

French, . .

German,.. J- .. .. each per Quarter, I I Q

Latin

Masic, . )

£ . . . . each per Quarter, . . 110

Drawing, . . )

Use of Piano Forte, per Quarter, , .. 050

Washing, per Quarter 0 15 0

Each Young Lady to te provided \vitb One Pair ol Sheets, Pillow Cases, Four Towela,
a Dessert and T«a«>poon.

Quarter's Notice, or a Quarter's Board, is required previous to the
Removal of a Pupil.

282 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

These single-sheet prospectuses were sent to friends and
anyone likely to have any influence with parents of girls. Ellen
Nussey rendered what help she could, and Charlotte Bronte
not only distributed the prospectuses, but also visited people
and canvassed for pupils. Not a single one was obtained by
these united efforts. This failure could not be attributed to
any feeling against the Bronte sisters ; they were respected
far and wide as the parson's daughters, but as teachers their
reputation was not good. If Charlotte Bronte had much to
complain of in Mrs. Sidgwick of Stonegappe, it is very certain
that Mrs. Sidgwick had something to say about Charlotte
Bronte, and Lothersdale was only a few miles from Haworth.
At Roe Head and Dewsbury Moor, Charlotte was known as a
strict disciplinarian, and her shyness with strangers did not
help her with the parents. In addition, the Brontes had always
" kept themselves very close," as the villagers in Haworth
expressed it, and to this day they are remembered at Haworth
as a mysterious family. The father was peculiar in his habits,
an instance of which Tabitha Brown related to me. She had
taken the tea things from Mr. Bronte's study, and knowing
that he put salt as well as sugar in his tea she tasted what
remained in his tea cup, and making a very long face exclaimed
that it was more like physic. When her sister, Martha Brown,
mentioned the matter to Mr. Bronte", he said it was physic.
He always believed in plenty of salt, as it kept away worms,
which were apt to breed in the body. Then there was his
peculiar habit of continuing to wear a high " stock " round
his neck made up of yards and yards of white silk, which
gave him an uncanny appearance. The peculiarities of
the Bronte household were the talk of the whole country
side.

Then there was the eccentric Bran well ; although the villagers
admired him in a way, they considered him to be " a bit queer."
In their younger days their little plays, acted in the absence
of their father, in which the servants were sometimes asked
to join, were considered to be wild and meaningless. If the
Brontes failed to appreciate the simple rustic folk of the place,
they in return were looked upon as a queer Irish family,

FAILURE OF THE SCHOOL PROJECT 283

and it was the air of mystery which surrounded the Bronte
home that scared the people from sending their daughters as
pupils. The reams of note-paper, bought from John Greenwood,
the local stationer, and covered with the Bronte children's
small hand-printing, meant very little to the simple-minded
people in the district, and it was only when their books
were known to be actually published that some of their
neighbours gave them credit for being clever and industrious.
To this day the Bronte home is spoken of in the Haworth dis-
trict as a mystery, and consequently strange tales are told
of the inmates.

If the school project had succeeded, it was the intention of
the sisters to get the parsonage enlarged by adding a school-
room and extra bedrooms, making the house as large as it is
at the present time. Charlotte, in her letter to M. Heger,
gives the impression that the house was large, and that with a
few alterations it would be possible to house five or six boarders.
She blamed Haworth for the failure of her scheme, but it was
the peculiar circumstances associated with the home, rather
than the locality, which prevented the idea of a school ever
becoming an established fact.

Haworth has been described by people who have visited
the village as a most desolate place — " surely the last place
that God made," as one writer pictures it, whereas it is a
typical North Country village — clean, bracing and healthy.
This Yorkshire moorland village looks its best when the
purple heather is in bloom, but at no time is it so desolate as
it has been described. The people were not by any means so
illiterate as Mrs. Gaskell described them, when she stated
that there was nobody for the Brontes to associate with.
Charlotte Bronte may have conveyed that impression to Mrs.
Gaskell, who would have found, had she lived there for any
length of time, that the people were as simple and lovable as
in Cranford. The parsonage servants were born and bred
in the neighbourhood, and they proved to be faithful and
true, if somewhat brusque and blunt. It was the failure of
their school plan that drove the Bronte girls to attempt to
publish their poems, for they always had the fear of poverty

284 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

before them. Their father's health was never robust, and
in the event of his death the prospect was by no means alluring.

Although Ellen Nussey was so true a friend to Charlotte
Bronte', it was Mary Taylor, with her superior education and
greater intellectual ability, to whom she related her doubts
and fears, and confided her literary secrets. Ellen Nussey
was only told of the authorship of Jane Eyre when Shirley
was actually published, and the information could no longer
be withheld. Charlotte's letter to Ellen Nussey disowning
any novels ascribed to her was written to throw dust in the
eyes of her friend, and it was written to deceive. Mrs. Gaskell
excuses Charlotte by saying she had promised her sisters never
to divulge the secret.

Mary Taylor relates a pitiful story of Charlotte Bronte's
fears of poverty when at Brussels —

" The first part of her time at Brussels was not uninteresting.
She spoke of new people and characters, and foreign ways
of the pupils and teachers. She knew the hopes and prospect
of the teachers, and mentioned one who was very anxious to
marry, ' she was getting so old.' She used to get her father
or brother (I forget which) to be the bearer of letters to different
single men, who she thought might be persuaded to do her the
favour, saying that her only resource was to become a sister of
charity if her present employment failed, and that she hated
the idea. Charlotte naturally looked with curiosity to people
of her own condition. This woman almost frightened her.
4 She declares there is nothing she can turn to, and laughs at the
idea of delicacy — and she is only ten years older than I am ! '
I did not see the connection till she said, ' Well, Polly, I should
hate being a sister of charity ; I suppose that would shock some
people, but I should.' I thought she would have as much
feeling as a nurse as most people, and more than some. She
said she did not know how people could bear the constant
pressure of misery, and never to change except to a new form
of it. It would be impossible to keep one's natural feelings.
I promised her a better destiny than to go begging anyone to
marry her, or to lose her natural feelings as a sister of charity.
She said, ' My youth is leaving me ; I can never do better

MARY TAYLOR'S LETTER 285

than I have done, and I have done nothing yet.' At such
times she seemed to think that most human beings were
destined by the pressure of worldly interests to lose one faculty
and feeling after another 'till they went dead altogether.
I hope I shall be put in my grave as soon as I'm dead ; I don't
want to walk about so.' Here we always differed. I thought
the degradation of nature she feared was a consequence of
poverty, and that she should give her attention to earning
money. Sometimes she admitted this, but could find no
means of earning money. At others she seemed afraid of
letting her thoughts dwell on the subject, saying it brought
on the worst palsy of all. Indeed, in her position, nothing
less than entire constant absorption in petty money matters
could have scraped together a provision.

" Of course, artists and authors stood high with Charlotte,
and the best thing after their works would have been their
company. She used very inconsistently to rail at money and
money-getting, and then wish she was able to visit all the large
towns in Europe, see all the sights, and know all the celebrities.
This was her notion of literary fame — a passport to the society
of clever people. . . . When she had become acquainted with the
people and ways at Brussels her life became monotonous, and
she fell into the same hopeless state as at Miss Wooler's, though
in a less degree. I wrote to her, urging her to go home or
elsewhere ; she had got what she wanted (French), and there
was at least novelty in a new place, if no improvement. That
if she sank into deeper gloom she would soon not have energy
to go, and she was too far from home for her friends to hear
of her condition and order her home as they had done from
Miss Wooler's. She wrote that I had done her a great service,
that she would certainly follow my advice, and was much
obliged to me. I have often wondered at this letter. Though
she patiently tolerated advice she could always put it aside,
and do as she thought fit. More than once afterwards she
mentioned the ' service ' I had done her. She sent me £10
to New Zealand, on hearing some exaggerated accounts of my
circumstances, and told me she hoped it would come in season-
ably ; it was a debt she owed me ' for the service I had done

286 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

her.' I should think £10 was a quarter of her income. The
* service ' was mentioned as an apology, but kindness was the
real motive."

Later Charlotte Bronte writes : " I speculate much on the
existence of unmarried and never-to-be-married woman now-
adays." The Bronte sisters had more independence than to
think of marriage as a way out of the difficulty. Anne might,
if fate had been kind, have married a curate, as was the case
with " Agnes Grey," but Charlotte and Emily were quite
reconciled to their idea that they would never marry. Charlotte
says : "I have made up my mind since I was a girl of twelve
that I should never marry," but fate was too much for her,
and in marriage she ventured her all, and died for it.

After the disappointment associated with the failure to
establish a school, the three sisters determined to turn to
literature, as a means of earning money. Emily and Anne
had been writing the mysterious Gondal Chronicles for more
than three years, and Charlotte had been busy with other
work of a literary character. Anne confessed that she had
been busy with Agnes Grey or, as she guardedly calls it, Some
Passages in the Life of an Individual. There is no distinct
record to tell us what Charlotte was writing at this time, but
her poems on Gilbert, Apostacy, Frances, referring to her life
at Brussels, must have been written in 1844-1845. Very
probably she wrote her first version of Jane Eyre under some
other title, when alone in Brussels, for in a letter to George
Henry Lewes she tells how Jane Eyre was objected to at first
on the same ground as The Professor was refused as being
deficient in " startling incident " and " thrilling excitement,"
and that could not be so with the Jane Eyre that was accepted
in 1847.

Mr. Bronte was iU and very despondent about his increasing
blindness, and yet he arranged for all his daughters to have
a short holiday during the Midsummer of 1845. Anne gave
up teaching, and left Thorpe Green of her own accord on
17th June, and at the same time Branwell came home for a
week's holiday and then returned to Thorpe Green alone.
He stayed at the Robinsons for a month after Anne left. It

THORPE GREEN 287

has been stated that he and Anne left together, which is not
correct. No serious trouble appears to have occurred whilst
Anne was at Thorpe Green, and she left for no reason whatever
connected with Branwell's conduct ; she had been teaching
continuously for six years, and had saved a large portion of
her salary ; her health was poor and it was decided that she
should stay at home. The fact that Bran well returned to the
Robinsons after Anne had left proves that nothing serious
could be urged against him at the time. It was rumoured
in the district that the new governess, who took Anne's place
at Thorpe Green, was the cause of his dismissal ; possibly, if
Anne had not left, Branwell's conduct might not have fur-
nished grounds for complaint, for his sister had a good influence
over him. The only reference Anne makes concerning him at
this time is that he has been ill, and has had much tribulation.
Although he naturally occupies much space in Mrs. GaskelTs
Life of Charlotte Bronte, so far as his residence at the Robinsons
goes, two and a half years' satisfactory employment has to be
set against the one month he remained after Anne left. If
he could retain his appointment and evidently give satisfaction
for so long a period, he was not the drunken wretch that Mrs.
Gaskell and others have tried to prove he was. He may have
received more attention from Mrs. Robinson than was due
to him as a tutor to her son, but Anne's presence would probably
have saved him from a fall. He suffered from an unfortunate
want of balance, and a strong emotional temperament, which
Charlotte Bronte confesses was like her own, and in any case
he was more sinned against than sinning, if Charlotte Bronte
was correct. " Of their mother I have hardly patience to
speak. A worse woman, I believe, hardly exists ; the more
I hear of her the more deeply she revolts me," wrote Charlotte
of Mrs. Robinson.

Anne had been at Thorpe Green more than four years, and
weary years they were, though she struggled on. In her first
little memorandum she tells how unhappy she would have
been had she known that she would have to stay there for
four years. The Robinson girls were genuinely fond of her,
and used to visit her at Haworth after she had left their home.

288 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTfiS

It was in June, 1845, that Charlotte received an invitation to
visit Ellen Nussey at Hathersage, which she felt compelled to
refuse. However, when Anne returned home, Charlotte could
be spared, and she joyfully prepared for the journey into Derby-
shire. Whilst she was away, Emily and Anne had a little
excursion to York, remaining there only one night, then passing
on to Keighley for a second night, and on the third day jour-
neying to Bradford for a few hours and then walking home
from Keighley to Haworth. They made this short trip a
sort of rehearsal of their play about the Gondals, and Emily
thought it worth putting on record in her memorandum,
where she says : " During our excursion we were Ronald
Macalgin, Henry Angora, Juliet Angusteena, Rosabella
Esmaldan, Ella and Julian Egremont, Catharine Navarre and
Cordelia Fitzaphnold, escaping from the palaces of instruction
to join the Royalists, who are hard driven at present by the
victorious Republicans." Emily at this time was a woman of
twenty-seven ; Anne was two years younger, and she wrote
a similar memorandum. These simple documents, which
Mr. Nicholls found nearly fifty years after they were written,
resemble the childish compositions of schoolgirls. The assump-
tion of the different characters in their plays was in keeping
with their vivid imagination. In the midst of their anxiety
about their father, and the prospect of being unable to earn
their own living, they still retained their lively imagination,
which saved them from despair. This power of transporting
themselves to other worlds reminds one of Coleridge, who once
apologised to a staid citizen in the street, whom he had knocked
against, by explaining that for the nonce he had been Leander
swimming the Hellespont. He was really preparing himself
for the Ancient Mariner, and much else the world would not
willingly let perish, though the man thought he meant to rob
him, as Coleridge's hand was almost in the man's pocket.

Charlotte Bronte committed a grievous wrong when she
destroyed the Gondal Chronicles and the fairy tales composed
by her sisters. They would have helped us to obtain a more
accurate view of some members of the Bronte family, and at
the present time would have been worth their weight in gold.

THE BRONTES' VIVID IMAGINATION 289

In the document by Emily, previously referred to, she quickly
steps from the imaginative to the practical, by saying she
must " hurry off to her turning and ironing." The " turning "
refers to the turning of the mangle, as the clothes after being
folded had to be mangled before they were ironed. Emily
Bronte, by many considered the greatest woman writer of the
nineteenth century, was in the habit of thinking out her poems
and plays whilst carrying out her ordinary domestic duties.
No wonder she has been called " the sphinx of literature,"
for, whilst a mystic and a dreamer, she was also a practical
and capable housekeeper.

This cult of the imagination was kept up by the Brontes all
through their brief life, and not dropped as in most cases when
childhood was over. The quiet and solitude of the moors
fostered it, and the books they read — French and German
as well as English — nourished it. It expressed itself in their
works, not so much by the facts which they assimilated, as by
the spirit of the stories.

This strong, imaginative power had its dangers for them ;
it tended to make them over-sensitive and morbid, and to give
way to rhapsodies. It was to a great extent responsible for
Branwell's fall, and for Charlotte's trying experience when at
Brussels, and yet what a mighty lever this vivid imagination
proved. Without it, their great novels would have been
impossible. It was this intense imagination which clothed the
characters in their novels with such power and force, and made
them differ so much from other novels, and it was the means
of opening out for these timid and solitary girls a greater life,
which helped them to believe in the life beyond.

For more than forty years, Hathersage failed to obtain the
honour of being associated with the Bronte literature, for the
simple reason that Ellen Nussey would not allow Mrs. Gaskell
to give the names of places and persons mentioned in Charlotte
Bronte's letters. This was unfortunate in some respects,
but Mrs. Gaskell was compelled to humour Ellen Nussey, and
be content with initials instead of full names, as she would have
preferred. Hathersage is now known to be the " Morton "
(*.£., Moor Town) of Jane Eyre, and is concerned with those

19— (3200)

290 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

chapters in the novel which range from XXVII to XXXVI,
that is, from Jane Eyre's leaving Rochester at Thornfield to
their meeting again at Ferndean Manor. Readers of Mrs.
GaskelPs Life were curious to know the place indicated by the
letter H, and it was not until about 1888 that a Mr. Hall

suggested, in the Sheffield Independent, that H might refer

to Hathersage. Shortly afterwards the Palatine Note Book
copied the reference.

There were several points which helped to fix Hathersage
as the Morton of Jane Eyre : the needle factory, and the actual
dwelling known as Moorseats, which Charlotte Bronte
mentions in Jane Eyre : her description of the village and
surrounding country fitted very closely with Hathersage and
the neighbourhood, as anyone would recognise who has visited
that charming part of Derbyshire, which includes Castleton
and the village of Hope.

. The Moor House of Jane Eyre was suggested by Moorseats,
a house near Hathersage Vicarage, which Charlotte Bronte
and Ellen Nussey probably visited. The pebbly bridle path
still remains. There is also a reference in Jane Eyre to a ball

in the neighbouring town of S at which the officers of the

garrison " put all their young knife-grinders and scissors-
merchants to shame." The allusion points so plainly to
Sheffield that the name might well have been given in full.

Just as Mrs. GaskelPs description of Monkshaven in Sylvia's
Lovers led Mr. Keene, the artist, to conclude that his Whitby
scenes would be suitable as guides to Du Maurier, who was
preparing illustrations to the novel — although Mr. Keene
did not know at the time that Monkshaven and Whitby were
the same — so Charlotte Bronte's description of " Morton
village " led Mr. Hall to conclude that the Morton of the
story must be the village of Hathersage, although he had
no definite proof that she had ever been there.

It was not until Mr. Shorter published Charlotte Bronte and
her Circle, in 1896, that it was found that the statement in
the Sheffield Independent was correct, for, in Mr. Snorter's
volume, the names and places mentioned in Charlotte Bronte's
letters were printed in full for the first time.

AN INVITATION TO HATHERSAGE 291

Charlotte Bronte received an invitation to Hathersage in
June, 1845, from Ellen Nussey, but it was not until after Anne
Bronte returned home from Thorpe Green that she felt free
to accept the invitation, which at first she had been compelled
to decline, owing to the expense of the journey, and the fact
that her father needed her, for about this time Charlotte says
in her letter to M. Heger : " My father allows me now to read
to him, and write for him ; he shows me, too, more confidence
than he has ever shown before, and this is a great consolation."
Jane Eyre, it will be remembered, was short of money after
she left Thornfield, just as Charlotte Bronte appears to have
been at this time, for, on her decision to leave Brussels, she had
to borrow money from Emily. Mrs. Gaskell quotes the letter
from Ellen Nussey to Charlotte Bronte as referring to Birstall
and not to Hathersage, and she remarks that Charlotte Bronte
refused an invitation to the only house to which she was ever
invited, so that it seems evident that Mrs. Gaskell did not
know that it was to Hathersage that Charlotte Bronte went
at this time. Ellen Nussey blocked out the names of places
and persons, which detracts from the interest of the letters.

Ellen Nussey was at Hathersage to prepare a home for her
brother, Henry Nussey, who had been appointed Vicar of
Hathersage, and had married immediately after his appoint-
ment. His sister stayed at the Vicarage whilst he was on his
honeymoon; she even had to select some of the furniture,
and engage the servants, and have everything in readiness for
the return of the bride and bridegroom. So anxious was she
to persuade Charlotte Bronte to be with her at this time that
she got her brother to write to Charlotte whilst he was on his
honeymoon, " for which you deserve smothering," wrote
Charlotte to Ellen Nussey in reply.

When Charlotte Bronte had obtained permission from her
father, she prepared for the short holiday, informing Ellen
Nussey that during her stay she wished to visit Chatsworth
and The Peak. There is no evidence that her wish in this
respect was realised, for, if she had visited the Hall at Chats-
worth and The Peak, she would probably have found some
place for them in her story. Travelling from Keighley,

292 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

she left the train at Sheffield and continued her journey to
Hathersage by coach — a distance of about ten miles.

In Jane Eyre Whitcross is mentioned with its white posts.

When Jane Eyre heard Rochester's voice calling, she tells
us she left Moor House at three o'clock and reached Whitcross
soon after four o'clock. A native of that part of Derbyshire
writes : " Whitcross, therefore, must be the cross roads by the
Fox House, up above Longshawe and Grindleford Bridge."

It was at the end of June or the beginning of July that
Charlotte Bronte" went to Hathersage, and the visit was fixed
well in her mind, for two years later she published Jane
Eyre's description of her doings in the village of Morton, which
may well be true to fact, for at that time she was quite undecided
as to her destiny ; she wanted to visit Paris, and to revisit
Brussels, and yet something kept her back, and chained her
to the old house, from which in two years she was to startle
the literary world with her great novel.

The church and parsonage are on the steep hill, which must
be climbed from the village.

In comparing the account of Jane Eyre's visit to Morton,
so accurate is the descriptive part, that Charlotte Bronte
would seem to have taken notes on the spot. The actual road
by which she went can be traced, as the place has changed
very little.

In the field referred to in the novel there is a brook with some
stepping-stones, which Charlotte Bronte" and Ellen Nussey
must have used. One of these stones is dated, and it is curious
that Charlotte Bronte did not mention it. The way by the
stepping-stones is the nearest by which to reach Moorseats, the
original of Moor House. There is also a mound or ancient
Roman Camp near the entrance to the church from the field
path. To get to Moorseats by the field a small wood must
be traversed.

The steps at Moorseats, leading to the kitchen door, are well
worn, and green with mould ; it was on these steps that Jane
Eyre fainted and was found by St. John Rivers. A low window
allows a view of the interior. The kitchen is larger than the

HATHERSAGE VILLAGE 293

corresponding room at the Haworth parsonage, and the same
may be said of the other rooms of the house. Behind is a
thickly- wooded copse.

It is unfortunate that Charlotte Bronte s letters to her
sisters at home have not been preserved, as it is probable that
they supplied descriptive accounts of the places which she
visited.

Although there is plenty of moorland around Hathersage,
the scenery is quite different from that in the neighbourhood
of Haworth. This part of Derbyshire is more thickly wooded
than the Haworth moors, which are almost devoid of trees,
and the white limestone roads are a marked contrast to the
roads of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Hathersage is a
typical Derbyshire village, with its clean stone houses dotted
here and there, a few shops, the village inn and post office,
and the church on the hillside, with its tall spire. Needles,
metal buttons and shackle pins are no longer manufactured
at Hathersage as in Charlotte Bronte's days. It is still a
small village, built on the steep slope of a hill and surrounded
by mountainous tracts, whose barren summits and dark
declivities agreeably contrast with the verdure of the smiling
vale they envelop. Great masses of rock, of all shapes and
sizes, lie scattered about the moorland, some grey with
clinging moss and lichen, others furrowed and weather-beaten.
The view of Hathersage from the main road is very fine,
standing out on the hill slope with the church above the green
knoll in front, and the vicarage sheltered by the trees. Moor-
seats is on the opposite hill, and further up the valley is the
house called North Lees, the ancestral home of the Eyres,
which has been thought to be the original of Moor House,
but it is too large, and neither in appearance nor interior
arrangement does it accord with Charlotte Bronte°s description.
The people at the parsonage were on visiting terms with the
family at Moorseats, according to Ellen Nussey's account,
and Charlotte Bronte got her impressions of the place from
visiting with Ellen Nussey.

Charlotte Bronte visited Hathersage only once, though in
Charlotte Bronte and her Circle she is said to have been at

294 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTfiS

Hathersage on two occasions, but the H in another of Charlotte
Bronte s letters refers to Hunsworth and not to Hathersage.
Her one visit, however, to Hathersage was sufficient to give
it a place in her great novel. She gives us just her own impres-
sions ; there is no indication that she read any history of the
place, but in the three weeks visit she made good use of her
opportunities, and with her love of landscape she revelled in
the scenery.

The calling at Moor House, on her way from Thornfield, is
quite in keeping with her flight from Brussels, for the family
at Moor House compares favourably with the people at the
Haworth parsonage. Hannah, the North Country servant, is
undoubtedly " Old Tabby," who speaks broad Yorkshire
with the Haworth dialect. There is nothing in her speech
to remind us of the softer tones of Derbyshire. Diana and
Mary, who are found reading German books in the kitchen,
are easily identified as Emily and Anne Bronte, and it is
St. John Rivers, who has been on his pastoral visits when he
finds Jane Eyre on the steps of his house. St. John as a
character owes something to Patrick Bronte, Henry Nussey
and Mr. Weightman.

The church is situated at the upper end of the village.
Like the church at Haworth and Ste. Gudule's, in Brussels, it
is dedicated to St. Michael. There is also a high, octagonal
spire. The church has been renovated since Charlotte Bronte
and Ellen Nussey worshipped in it, and several stained-glass
windows have been added by some of the old Hathersage
residents.

The Rev. Henry Nussey does not seem to have kept the
fabric of the church in very good condition, for his successor
spent nearly £2,000 in renovating it, so that when Charlotte
Bronte was there it must have been in a somewhat dilapidated
condition.

The most conspicuous monument in the church is the tomb
of Robert Eyre. On the top of the tomb is a full-length brass
plate in which is depicted the figure of a knight in armour, and
by his side is his wife clothed in the costume of the reign of
Edward IV.

HATHERSAGE AND JANE EYRE 295

There are several other monuments in the Hathersage
church to the memory of the Eyre family, but there is little
known of this once powerful family in the Peak District in
Derbyshire.

Joanna Eyre, of the Eyre monument, in the Hathersage
church, has for long been credited with being the origin of the
title of Charlotte Bronte's great novel, Jane Eyre. Whether
this is so or no is uncertain, but there is no doubt that Charlotte
Bronte* would be greatly attracted by the Eyre tomb, with its
long brass plate, effigies and inscription, but Hathersage only
occupies nine chapters of the novel, and Jane, the heroine,
dominates the whole book.

It is probable that the name " Jane " in Jane Eyre was
suggested by the Christian name of her favourite sister,
Emily Jane Bronte — " Mine bonnie love," as Charlotte calls
her. The name " Jane " was also a commonplace name,
which Charlotte thought would be most suitable for the
character of her heroine, who was to be plain, and by no means
beautiful. Harriet Martineau tells us that Charlotte Bronte
once remarked to her sisters that they were wrong — even
morally wrong — in making their heroines beautiful as a matter
of course. They replied that it was impossible to make a
heroine interesting on any other terms, to which she said :
" I will prove to you that you are wrong : I will show you a
heroine as plain and small as myself, who shall be as interesting
as any of yours." " Hence : Jane Eyre," said Harriet
Martineau, in relating the incident.

In The Professor, which was written before Jane Eyre, the
long poem which Frances repeated in Chapter XXIII has
" Jane " for the heroine, and it is quite evident in reading
the poem that Charlotte Bronte was the original of " Jane,"
just as she is in Jane Eyre.

Most writers contend that the title of the novel originated
in Charlotte Bronte's visit to Hathersage. Here she saw the
old tombstone, with its inscription, Joanna Eyre, and forthwith
she gave her novel, which was written two years afterwards,
the title of Jane Eyre. This is the generally accepted explana-
tion. But the word Eyre is a legal term, dating from the

296 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

time of Henry II, and simply means "itinerant." Judges
on circuit are still described as " His Majesty's Justices in
Eyre." Whether Charlotte Bronte knew this is not certain.

The novel is largely autobiographical, as is now well known,
and is based on facts in Charlotte Bronte's life, from going to
school at Cowan Bridge, Lowood, to her return from Hather-
sage (Morton) to Wycoller Hall near Haworth (Ferndean
Manor) in 1848. Shortly after she returned from Hathersage,
her father became blind, but after an operation his sight was
restored. The novelist was with her father during the operation
for cataract at Manchester, and during the period when he
began to distinguish colours and recover his eyesight, which
she utilised in her description of Rochester's recovery of his
sight. This may also have been suggested by the fact that
M. Heger, who contributed something to the character of
Rochester, suffered in early manhood from defective eyesight,
but he regained his normal sight in later days. This fact
explains why Charlotte tells M. Heger of her weak eyesight
in her letters to him. In her correspondence with M. Heger
there is an evident craving for sympathy.

Jane Eyre is an account of the itinerary or wandering of the
plain little heroine, who is none other than Charlotte Bronte
herself, and, therefore, it is possible that Joanna Eyre may
not be responsible for the title of Charlotte Bronte's novel.

The Hathersage parsonage, where Charlotte Bronte stayed,
has been enlarged since 1845. Its situation is just as the
novelist described it : " Near the churchyard, and in the
middle of a garden stood a well-built though small house,
which I had no doubt was the parsonage." In many respects
it resembles the Haworth parsonage, though the garden is
longer, and the churchyard is not so near the house. It is
approached by a narrow lane, as is the case with the Haworth
vicarage, so that Charlotte Bronte would not feel that she was
in totally different surroundings. In her time, there were
four rather small rooms on the ground floor, and four on the
first floor, and a narrow passage ran through the house from
front to rear

In the churchyard, visitors are shown the burial place of

CHARLOTTE BRONTE LEAVES HATHERSAGE 297

John Nailor, Robin Hood's giant henchman, better known as
" Little John."

In Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte mentions Robin Hood's
grave, which she saw when a pupil at Roe Head, near Hudders-
field, and she would be interested that his faithful henchman
was reputed to be buried at Hathersage.

The novelist probably wandered to the surrounding villages
during her stay at Hathersage. The beautiful district, which
includes the Vale of Hope, Castleton, Hassop, Tissington, and
Ashbourne, is now much more frequented than it was in
Charlotte Bronte's days, partly owing to the opening of the
Dore and Chinley railway, whereas formerly it was reached
from one direction by driving or walking from Sheffield.

Charlotte Bronte left Hathersage on 23rd July, 1845. On
her journey home from Sheffield to Leeds, she travelled with
a gentleman, whose features and bearing betrayed him to be
a Frenchman. Putting aside her natural shyness, she inquired
in French if he were not a Frenchman, and on his replying in
the affirmative, she further asked if he had not spent some
time in Germany, as she detected the thick, guttural pro-
nunciation. She evidently enjoyed the journey, pleasantly
beguiled by conversation in the language in which she had
become proficient. It is now known by the light of her recently
published letters in The Times, sent to M. Heger in 1844-45,
that the real reason for her conversation with the Frenchman
was that he reminded her of M. Heger : " Every word was
most precious to me, because it reminded me of you. I love
French for your sake with all my heart and soul," she writes.

It was on the return from this visit to Derbyshire in July,
1845, that she found Bran well at home, after his dismissal
from Thorpe Green ; when she ascertained the true reason,
she was extremely angry with her brother. Possibly she
would not have said so much against him to Ellen Nussey,
but that she had to give a reason for not inviting her friend
to Ha worth during the autumn, as she had wished.

It was in the November after Charlotte returned from
Hathersage that she sent what appears to be her last letter to
M. Heger, which is dated November, 1845.

CHAPTER XXII

THE PUBLISHING VENTURE, 1845-1846

POEMS

SIMILARITY of Emily and Anne BrontS's literary taste — Emily Bronte
the moving spirit in literary work — Charlotte Bronte's introduction
to Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey — Emily Bronte's surpassing
genius — Collection of the BrontS poems for publication — Assumed
names of authors — Attempts to find a publisher — Cost of publication
— Publishing venture a financial failure — Reviews of the volume of
poems — Complete Poems of Emily Bronte.

ALTHOUGH Charlotte Bronte has always been credited with
taking the initiative in the three sisters becoming authors, it
is much more probable that Emily was the moving spirit.
Whilst Anne was away from home, Emily had great sympathy
with her, and spoke of her as " exiled and harassed," and this
was even before Anne's hard four years at Thorpe Green.
When she returned in June, 1845, no reason was given why she
should stay at home permanently, but it was evidently Emily
who determined to try to direct their talents into other channels
than teaching, in order to avoid their separation from the old
home.

Emily and Anne, though differing in ability, were very
similar in their tastes and habits : both were devoted to animals,
and each had her own pets. Their poetry was by no means
similar, and yet they both directed their thoughts into the
same channels — the Gondal Chronicles, their respective poems
on "The Old Home," and their "Last Lines." Emily was
evidently a source of great strength to Anne, for when Mr.
Clement Shorter published the Complete Poems of Emily Bronte
he included with them four of Anne's, which it is suggested
were in Emily's handwriting, though it was ascertained that
they had been published sixty years before by Charlotte
BrontS herself as Anne's work.

For years these two devoted sisters had been sharing each
other's confidence with regard to their literary work, and it
was probably Emily who saw a means of earning money by
their pens, before Charlotte mentioned it. The two little

298

DISCOVERY OF BRONTE JOURNALS 299

memoranda, written at intervals of four years, 1841 and 1845,
were to be opened on Emily's birthday. It was Emily who
started the mysterious Gondal Chronicles, in which she and
Anne collaborated. It seems likely that one sister took
the side of the Royalists, whilst the other favoured the Republi-
cans. It is a pity that Charlotte, carrying out what she said
were her sister's wishes, destroyed those strange chronicles.
Charlotte had stated, years before, that their best plays were
written secretly, and it was not until forty years afterwards,
when Mr. Nicholls was looking over the Bronte relics, subse-
quent to Mr. Shorter's visit in 1895, that four little journals
were brought to light, being discovered folded up in the smallest
possible space in a tiny pin box. These four short memoranda
were much more important than the discoverers recognised,
and, although Mr. Nicholls referred to them as " sad reading,"
they were extremely interesting, for they contain the only
information available concerning the Gondal Chronicles, which
have been a mystery for so many years, and which Emily
tells us had engaged the attention of the two sisters for three
and a half years.

Mr. Shorter, in his Life and Letters of the Brontes, says,
" There is wonderfully little difference in the tone or spirit of
the journals." It is scarcely possible, however, to agree with
this view, as there appears to be a marked difference even in
the view which the Bronte sisters take of the Gondals.

In her 1845 memorandum, Anne says, " Emily is writing the
Emperor Julius' Life, and also some poetry," but she did not
know what the subject was, and then she goes on to say :

" I have begun the third volume of Passages in the Life
of an Individual. Emily and I have a lot of work to do. When
shall we sensibly diminish it ? I want to get a habit of early
rising. Shall I succeed ? We have not yet finished our
Gondal Chronicles that we begun three and a half years ago.
When will they be done ? The Gondals are at present in a
sad state. The Republicans are uppermost, but the Royalists
are not quite overcome. The young sovereigns with their
brothers and sisters are still at the Palace of Instruction.
The Unique Society about half a year ago were wrecked on a

300 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

desert island, as they were returning from Gaul. They are
still there, but we have not played at them much yet. The
Gondals in general are not in a first-rate playing condition.
Will they improve ? " l

This habit of making a statement and then questioning it
is Anne's peculiar style. Emily tells us that she is writing a
work on the First War, and that Anne is writing some articles
on this and a book by Henry Sophona.

" The Gondals still flourish bright as ever. We intend
sticking firm by the rascals as long as they delight us, which
I am glad to say that they do at present." The sisters evi-
dently regard the Gondals in different lights. Whilst to
Emily they remain bright as ever, to Anne they are con-
sidered to be in a sad state. Again, Emily mentions that
she wishes " Everybody should be as comfortable and undes-
ponding as herself, and then we should have a very tolerable
world of it." Whilst poor Anne says, " I, for my part, cannot
well be flatter or older in mind than I am now." Anne
mentions that Charlotte wishes to go to Paris as governess.
Emily's view of the whole situation is the more hopeful, for
she says : " I am quite content for myself .... having learnt
to make the most of the present, and long for the future with
the fidgetiness that I cannot do all I wish."1

It was Emily who dreamed dreams, and saw visions of her-
self and Anne coming before the world as authors, though it is
very certain they meant to stick to their anonymity. She
concludes her little document as follows : "I have plenty of
work on hands, and writing, and am altogether full of business."
This was written on 30th July, just after Charlotte Bronte
returned from Hathersage, and before she had discovered
that Emily and Anne had written a number of poems which
she considered were worthy of being published.

Both Emily and Anne mention that Branwell was ill, and
had gone to Liverpool. There is a little reference to Tabby
in Emily's journal, which has puzzled many. " Tabby has
just been teasing me to turn as formerly to ' Pilloputate.' '
This, according to the Yorkshire verdict, refers to the peeling

1 Charlotte Bronte and her Circle, by Clement K. Shorter.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS AND AGNES GREY 301

of the potatoes. Yorkshire people speak of " pilling potates,"
and they refer to potato peelings as " potati pillings." Emily
had evidently taken upon herself to peel the potatoes for the
household when Charlotte and Anne were away, but on their
return, she relinquished some of her domestic duties, including
the preparation of the potatoes. In later days, Charlotte
Bronte told Mrs. Gaskell that she found that Tabby did not
take the eyes out of the potatoes when she peeled them, and
therefore Charlotte was accustomed to go to the kitchen and
finish the peeling of the potatoes without letting Tabby know.
Emily was not only the genius of the family, but she was also
thoroughly domesticated.

If Charlotte had gone to Paris as she had wished, her two
sisters would have worked on at home at their writing, for
Emily states that they had enough money for their present
needs, with the prospect of accumulation. Earlier in the
document she says that they tried to start a school and had
failed, but that at this time " None of them had any great
longing for it."

The only private money that they had was the small dividends
obtained from the legacy left by their aunt, and " the prospect
of accumulated funds " could only have referred to money
earned by writing. Anne had decided to stay at home per-
manently, and she and Emily both leave it on record that they
had more than enough to do, and were very busy writing.

Five years later, probably owing to the confusion of the
names of the three Bronte sisters as three separate authors,
Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. asked Charlotte to explain exactly
how they started their literary work. Emily and Anne had
been dead two years when Charlotte wrote by way of preface
to the second edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey—

" One day in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on
a MS. volume of verse in my sister Emily's handwriting. Of
course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did
write verse : I looked it over, and something more than surprise
seized me — a deep conviction that these were not common
effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write.

302 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine.
To my ear they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy,
and elevating. My sister Emily was not a person of demon-
strative character, nor one, on the recesses of whose mind and
feelings, even those nearest and dearest to her could, with
impunity, intrude unlicensed ; it took hours to reconcile her
to the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her that
such poems merited publication. . . . Meantime, my younger
sister quietly produced some of her own compositions, intimat-
ing that since Emily's had given me pleasure, I might like to
look at hers. I could not but be a partial judge, yet I thought
that these verses too had a sweet sincere pathos of their own.
We had very early cherished the dream of one day becoming
authors. . . . We agreed to arrange a small selection of our
poems, and, if possible, to get them printed."

This explanation proves that Emily did not mean Charlotte
to know of the MS. volume of verse, and it hints at the fact
that Emily and Anne were working with the intention of
publishing. Possibly if Charlotte had gone to Paris, as they
seem to have expected, they hoped to have a surprise in store
for her by presenting her with a published book of their poems.
The result, however, was that Charlotte, as the oldest, took
charge of all correspondence relating to publishing. It is
probable that Emily might have been more successful, but as
Charlotte says in the preface previously mentioned : " She
(Emily) had no worldly wisdom ; her powers were unadapted
to the practical business of life ; she would fail to defend her
most manifest rights, to consult her most legitimate advan-
tage " ; and yet M. Heger considered her much cleverer than
Charlotte.

Mrs. Gaskell tells us —

" He seems to have rated Emily's genius as something even
higher than Charlotte's " ; and her estimation of their relative
powers was the same. Emily had a head for logic, and a capa-
bility of argument, unusual in a man, and rare indeed in a
woman, according to M. Heger. Impairing the force of this
gift was her stubborn tenacity of will, which rendered her

M. HEGER'S ESTIMATION OF EMILY BRONTE 303

obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes, or her own sense
of right, was concerned. " She should have been a man —
a great navigator," said M. Heger in speaking of her. " Her
powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery
from the knowledge of the old ; and her strong, imperious
will would never have been daunted by opposition or difficulty ;
never have given way but with life. And yet, moreover,
her faculty of imagination was such that, if she had written
a history, her view of scenes and characters would have been
so vivid, and so powerfully expressed, and supported by such
a show of argument, that it would have dominated over the
reader, whatever might have been his previous opinions, or
his cooler perceptions of its truth." Dr. Paul Heger, the son
of M. Heger, tells me that his father could not read English
sufficiently well to understand Withering Heights, and as it
was not translated into French until 1892, under the title of
UAmant, he could hardly have digested it in 1855, but it is
certainly remarkable that in the few months Emily was
at Brussels he should have grasped her character so
accurately.

Also old Mr. Bronte told Mrs. Gaskell that he considered
Emily the cleverest of the sisters, and in this the sexton's
family agreed. Critics have failed to give Emily her due,
but now, nearly seventy years later, the whole literary world
is prepared to put Emily before Charlotte, both as a poet and
as a novelist. The old servants at the parsonage, as well as
several who knew the Brontes, had nothing but good to say
of Emily Bronte, and Emily Jane was the name given to more
than one child in Haworth in honour of the author of Wuthering
Heights.

Seniority in age counted for much in the early Victorian
days ; Charlotte had more enthusiasm than Emily, was more
impulsive, and when she was roused she was anxious to act
at once. Evidently against the will of Emily, she persuaded
her to join with Anne and herself in compiling a book of their
own poems. The information gained from the minute journals,
only discovered half-a-century later, shows how determined
Emily and Anne were that Charlotte should not know what

304 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

they were doing. If in later days Charlotte had found these
precious little documents, the probability is she would have
destroyed them with the other manuscripts, for which it is
hard to forgive her.

Charlotte tells us that the issuing of their little book of
poems was a difficult task, which seems to imply that they had
some trouble in deciding what to include and what to reject,
in addition to the difficulty of finding a publisher.

Charlotte undertook the post of editor, and she arranged
twenty- three poems of her own, twenty-two of Emily's and
twenty-one of Anne's. How significant these numbers are
when the respective ages of the sisters are considered ! Then
came the question of assigning the author's name, and so to
facilitate matters they decided to adopt names that were
neither decidedly masculine nor feminine. In Yorkshire it
is still a common custom to use a surname for the first name,
and the Bionte sisters, in order to be impartial, retained their
own initials. Charlotte adopted the name " Currer," Emily
became " Ellis " and Anne was " Acton " — all taking the
surname of " Bell." It has not been difficult to trace the origin
of Charlotte's assumed name, for not far from Haworth lived
Miss Frances Mary Richardson Currer, of Eshton Hall, near
Skipton, who finds a place in the Dictionary of National
Biography.

The three groups of poems are all very different in spirit,
and they range over a number of years from their early youth
to the time of publication. In the opinion of the Bronte
sisters, it was the correct thing to publish poetry first, for had
not Charlotte already written to Southey, Coleridge and
Wordsworth, and had not the sisters also read most of the
English poets ?

After many failures, a firm of booksellers in Paternoster
Row, Messrs. Aylott and Jones, agreed to publish the book for
thirty guineas, which the sisters, poor as they were, consented
to advance. When the book was printed, they had to pay
another £2, and later still another £10, to defray the cost of
advertising the book in magazines which they selected. Added
to this was a further expense of £5, due to an error in the

A VOLUME OF POEMS 305

estimate. From this was deducted 11s. 9d., so that altogether
they advanced nearly £48. This was a large sum of money for
the Bronte sisters to find, but they sacrificed it hopefully. They
had the satisfaction of seeing the poems actually printed, and
their pseudonyms on the title page.

The result is an old story ; only two copies were sold, but
one of the purchasers, a Mr. F. Enoch — a song-writer — was
so struck by the genius which the poems displayed that he
wrote through the publishers asking for the signatures of the
three poets. This request was graciously granted, but the
real names were not disclosed. The original slip of paper
is now in the Bronte Museum at Haworth.

In the biographical notice of her sisters, Charlotte writes —

" The book was printed ; it is scarcely known, and all of
it that merits to be known are the poems of Ellis Bell. The
fixed conviction I held, and hold, of the worth of these poems,
has not, indeed, received the confirmation of much favourable
criticism, but I must retain it notwithstanding." Charlotte
knew good poetry when she saw it, and she was right in giving
the highest praise to Emily, as everyone recognises now.

Charlotte, ever the ambitious member of the family, sent
copies of the book of poems to Wordsworth, De Quincey,
Tennyson and Lockhart, and, if the letters of acknowledgment
are not forthcoming, the account of this gift finds a place in
each of the biographies of the recipients —

" To THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

" SIR, — My relatives, Ellis and Acton Bell, and myself, heed-
less of the warning of various respectable publishers, have
committed the rash act of printing a volume of poems.

" The consequences predicted have, of course, overtaken us :
our book is found to be a drug ; no man needs it or heeds it.
In the space of a year our publisher has disposed but of two
copies, and by what painful efforts he succeeded in getting rid
of these two, himself only knows.

" Before transferring the edition to the trunkmakers, we
have decided on distributing as presents a few copies of what

250— (2200)

306 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

we cannot sell ; and we beg to offer you one in acknowledgment
of the pleasure and profit we have often and long derived from
your works.

" I am, sir, yours very respectfully,

"CURRER BELL."1

The three sisters were naturally eager to see the reviews
of their book. They had asked their publishers to forward
copies of the principal literary magazines of the day, including
Colburn's New Monthly Magazine, Bentley's, Hood's, Jerrold's,
BlackwootTs, and Eraser's Magazine, as well as the Edinburgh
Review, T ait's Edinburgh Magazine, Chambers' Edinburgh
Journal, The Dublin University Magazine, The Daily News,
The Globe, The Examiner, and the Britannia newspaper. The
only magazines that reviewed the poems apparently were
The Dublin University Magazine,The Critic, and The Athenaeum.
The review in The Critic pleased Charlotte very much. The
following extract will explain the reason : " They, in whose
hearts are chords strung by nature to sympathise with the
beautiful and the true, will recognise in these compositions the
presence of more genius than it was supposed this utilitarian
age had devoted to the loftier exercises of the intellect."
The Athenaeum reviewer singled out Ellis Bell's poems as the
best : " Ellis possesses a fine, quaint spirit and an evident
power of wing that may reach heights not here attempted " ;
and again : " The poems of Ellis convey an impression of
originality beyond what his contributions to these volumes
embody."

The book of poems had been published about the end of
May, 1846. Having found a publisher in the previous February,
the three sisters were encouraged, and each set to work to
write a novel. To feel that they were now embarked on the
sea of literature inspired and sustained them.

Mrs. Gaskell pictures them as having forgotten their sense
of authorship owing to their anxiety concerning their brother
Branwell, which is scarcely correct, as they worked incessantly
at literature, feeling that it afforded them some relief from their

1 De Quincey Memorials, by Alexander H. Japp.

BRONTE CENTENARY SERVICE 307

domestic troubles. Charlotte refused all invitations to Ellen
Nussey at Brookroyd, Birstall, and from the end of July, 1845,
when she left Ellen Nussey in Hathersage to the end of January,
1846, the two friends did not meet. This was not altogether
Bran well's fault, though, without positively saying so, Charlotte
gave Ellen Nussey the impression that he was the obstacle.

Referring to this busy time, truthful Anne Bronte wrote :
" We have done nothing to speak of, though we have combined
to be busy."

The three sisters kept the secret of their literary efforts
even from their father, and worked conscientiously from August
until the following February. Although this book of poems
proved such a dismal financial failure, not being wanted, as
Charlotte tells us, it is now of great value. One of the original
first editions, with the Aylott and Jones imprint, was priced
at £34 in a recently issued catalogue.

Charlotte Bronte proved to be right ; Emily Bronte's poems
rank highest. The poems by Emily Bronte, which Charlotte
selected, have been issued in a separate volume in 1906 and
1908. A complete set of all Emily Bronte's poems which
could be gathered together were edited in 1910 by Mr.
Clement Shorter and Sir William Robertson Nicoll.

The hymns sung in Guiseley Church on Sunday, 29th
December, 1912, in memory of the marriage at that church
of Patrick Bronte and Maria Branwell on 29th December,
1812, contained three by Anne Bronte, and one (not exactly
a hymn) consisting of five verses from the poem, " Winter
Stories," by Charlotte Bronte. Unfortunately, two of the
hymns by Anne Bronte were wrongly attributed to Emily —

" A Prayer," beginning —

" My God ! O, let me call Thee mine !
Weak, wretched sinner though I be." •

And " Confidence "—

" Oppressed with sin and woe,
A burdened heart I bear."

The mistake probably arose owing to an error in the Com-
plete Poems of Emily Bronte, published by Messrs. Hodder

308 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

and Stoughton in 1910. Here are to be found the two hymns by
Anne Bronte, under the head of " Unpublished Poems,"
by Emily Bronte. Two other poems in the same collection
are also inaccurately attributed to Emily Bronte — " Des-
pondency " and " In Memory of the Happy Day in February."
All these poems had been published as far back as 1850 by
Charlotte Bronte in her selection of poems by her sister Anne,
and they may be found in the Haworth Edition of The Professor,
issued by Smith, Elder & Co., as well as in previous editions of
The Professor, published by the same firm.

Charlotte and Anne Bronte's poems have not been re-issued
separately in England, though Anne has several included in
well-known hymn books, and in 1882 Charlotte's were pub-
lished in New York by Messrs. White and Stokes. Only
Emily's poems are destined to live, as Charlotte predicted,
the complete edition recently issued being highly valued by
all Emily Bronte's devotees.

Anne Bronte's ability has not so far been fully recognised.
Whilst Charlotte quickly made her mark, and Emily has now
attained the place which was rightly hers sixty-six years ago,
Anne has been neglected. She certainly is inferior to her more
gifted sisters, and has suffered by comparison. The inclusion
of some of her poems in several collections of hymns, and the
selection of three of her hymns for the commemoration service
of her parents' wedding at Guiseley Church, would have
cheered this pious member of the Bronte family.

Answering a correspondent who wished to know the meaning
of I Cor. xv, 22 : " For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ
shall all be made alive," the Rev. Professor Smith, D.D., of
the Theological College, Londonderry, in The British Weekly
for 14th Nov., 1912, says : " You should read Anne Bronte's
little poem, 'A Word to the "Elect,"' and her ' Wildf ell
Hall,' Chapter XX."

Two verses read —

And, oh ! there lives within my heart
A hope, long nursed by me ;

And should its cheering ray depart,
How dark my soul would be !

STANZAS TO BRANWELL BRONTE 309

"That as in Adam all have died,

In Christ shall all men live ;
And ever round His throne abide,
Eternal praise to give."

There is little that is didactic about Emily's poems, but
there is power and force like a gale of wind ; there is an
aloneness, which is not loneliness but liberty —

" Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty."

It was in the October of 1845, whilst the poems were being
revised and selected, that Emily Bronte wrote The Philosopher,
one of her best-known poems. It has the same refrain which
Emily re-echoes over and over again — a wish for death. In
The Philosopher, she writes —

" Oh, let me die, that power and will

Their cruel strife may close ;
And conquering good and conquering ill
Be lost in one repose ! "

Much has been written to prove that Emily was not more
partial to her brother in his disgrace and weakness than the
other sisters, but the stanzas written by her after his death
prove only too well what Emily felt —

STANZAS TO (Branwell).

" Well, some may hate, and some may scorn,
And some may quite forget thy name ;
But my sad heart must ever mourn
Thy ruined hopes, thy blighted fame !
'Twas thus I thought, an hour ago,
Even weeping o'er that wretch's woe ;
One word turned back my gushing tears,
And lit my altered eye with sneers.
Then, ' Bless the friendly dust,' I said,
' That hides thy unlamented head !
Vain as thou wert, and weak as vain,
The slave of Falsehood, Pride, and Pain —
My heart has nought akin to thine ;
Thy soul is powerless over mine.'
But these were thoughts that vanished too ;
Unwise, unholy, and untrue :
Do I despise the timid deer,
Because his limbs are fleet with fear ?

310 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Or, would I mock the wolf's death-howl,

Because his form is gaunt and foul ?

Or, hear with joy the leveret's cry,

Because it cannot bravely die ?

No ! Then above his memory

Let Pity's heart as tender be ;

Say, ' Earth, lie lightly on that breast,

And, kind Heaven, grant that spirit rest ! ' '

The Gondal Chronicles will probably never be satisfactorily
traced, but from Emily Bronte's complete poems it is possible
to select some which will tell of the mysterious Gondals ; and,
if further proof is needed that Wuthering Heights was Emily's
work, it can be found foreshadowed in several of her recently
published poems.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE FIRST BRONTE NOVELS

1845-1847

SECRECY observed in writing the novels — The village postman nearly
discovers the secret — Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and The
Professor — Publishers' repeated refusal of The Professor — Why
The Professor was refused — Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey
accepted — Origin of many of Charlotte Bronte's characters in her
novels — Contrast between The Professor and Jane Eyre.

NOT a word was written to anyone concerning the work which
kept the three sisters busy during the winter of 1845-46.
The old father, now almost blind, was in the habit of retiring
at an early hour each evening ; the servants, too, old and
faithful Tabby, and Martha Brown — the sexton's daughter —
were accustomed to go to bed soon after nine o'clock. After
that hour the sisters were alone, and it was then that they
paced the little sitting-room, and compared notes, deciding
what they might attempt to publish and what they should
reject.

Whilst they were going about their domestic duties, their
novels were simmering, and they kept odd bits of paper on
which to chronicle their thoughts. Emily's favourite spot
for writing was in the little front garden, sitting on a small
stool in the shade of the currant bushes, or out on the moors,
far away from any habitation, and in company with the birds
and the few sheep that wandered about the moor. Both her
poems and her one great novel are redolent of the breezy
heights.

Both the father and the servants had a shrewd suspicion,
as they admitted in after years, that something was brewing.
The difficulty must have been to keep Branwell out of the
little sitting-room, and, although Charlotte tells us that he
never knew what his sisters had published, he did know that
they were writing with a view to publication, if they could get
their work accepted. She admits that, when she failed to get

311

312 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

a reply from the publishers concerning her manuscript, she
consulted Branwell, who told her that it was because she had
not prepaid the return postage. Moreover, the landlord of
the Black Bull, who was a man to be trusted, said that Branwell
was eager to gather any local traditions in order to pass them
on to Charlotte for her book, so that he must have been in the
secret. It is difficult to realise how the sisters managed to
keep the information from him, when their efforts had met with
success. Not only were they in league against admitting
him to a knowledge of their success, but even the servants
helped. It was old Tabby's special duty to secure the letters
addressed to Currer Bell, Esq., care of the Rev. P. Bronte.
At a later date, on account of a mistake which almost revealed
the secret, the envelopes bore the inscription, Miss Bronte,
by Charlotte's request to the publishers. The village postman,
who lived close by the church steps and within a stone's throw
of the vicarage, was greatly troubled to know who Currer
Bell, Esq., was, for the natives of Haworth were extremely
inquisitive, which partly accounts for the fact that the Bronte
sisters were not altogether popular, since " they kept themselves
too much to themselves," as one who knew them said. There
was too much mystery associated with the parsonage, which
led to exaggerated stories concerning the family. Some of
these stories misled Mrs. Gaskell and prejudiced her against
the father and the son.

Old James Feather, the grandfather of the present post-
master, and the carrier of the precious manuscripts which were
tied up in thick, coarse paper, was determined to find out who
Currer Bell was, and, accosting Mr. Bronte one day, he said :
" You have a gentleman staying at the parsonage, called
Mr. Currer Bell." "You are mistaken," said the Vicar,
" there is nobody in the whole of my parish of that name."
The postman kept his counsel and continued to deliver the
letters addressed to Currer Bell, Esq. Probably the postman's
inquisitiveness led Charlotte afterwards to have her letters
addressed to her in her own name.

The poems had been despatched in manuscript, and the
hopes of the sisters were high, for now they felt they were on

FIRST NOVELS 313

the right road to success. They fixed the price of the little
book of poems at five shillings, and then altered it to four
shillings. Charlotte tells how each sister decided to write a
novel after they had compiled their poems.

The plan of the book of poems had been to publish three
sets of poems in one book, and, although it was quite unusual,
the three sisters decided to compile a book of fiction consisting
of three distinct stories. They, however, wrote to Messrs.
Aylott and Jones stating that the stories could either be
published together in one volume, or separately. The possi-
bility of the three books in one volume not being accepted
together did not at first strike them, seeing that the poems
had not been separated. Both Charlotte and Emily Bronte
adopted a castaway as their hero or heroine.

Mary Taylor, in a letter to Mrs. Gaskell, says —

" Cowper's poem, The Castaway, was known to them all,
and they all at times appreciated, or almost appropriated it.
Charlotte told me once that Branwell had done so ; and
though his depression was the result of his faults, it was in
no other respect different from hers."

Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte gives the
impression of a very depressed, despondent group of women in
Haworth parsonage in the year 1846, but with all their
domestic trials, Bran well's dissipation, and the old father's
growing blindness, they kept up their courage wonderfully.
They had made up their minds to succeed as writers, for there
was no other way in which they could earn a livelihood. To
quote Charlotte in 1850—

" Ill-success failed to crush us ; the mere effort to succeed
had given a wonderful zest to existence ; it must be pursued.
We each set to work on a prose tale : Ellis Bell produced
Wuthering Heights ; Acton Bell, Agnes Grey ; and Currer Bell
also wrote a narrative in one volume. These MSS. were
perseveringly obtruded upon various publishers for the space
of a year and a half ; usually, their fate was an ignominious
and abrupt dismissal."

Around Agnes Grey no mystery hangs ; it is a simple story

314 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

of " Some Passages in the Life of an Individual " which she
quaintly mentions in her little journal of July, 1845, and it
gives an unvarnished account of the hard time that Anne had
when a governess with Mrs. Ingham at Blake Hall, Mirfield,
and at the Rev. Edmund Robinson's, Thorpe Green, Little
Ouseburn, near York. In a letter to Mr. W. S. Williams,
Charlotte says : " Agnes Grey is true and unexaggerated
enough." In consequence, no discussion has ever been aroused
except that Mrs. Gaskell tells us that she once asked if Anne
had had the trying experience of killing the nest of birds,
which her pupil at Blake Hall had meant to kill by inches,
and Charlotte replied that only those who have been governesses
have any idea of what it means.

The Professor was the novel that Charlotte Bronte first
sent round to the publishers in company with Agnes Grey and
Wuthering Heights, and then afterwards it travelled round
alone. Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights, strange to say,
were accepted by the same publisher, though they were totally
different in character, and it is hardly possible to conceive
of the same publisher having an equal liking for each. No
research has ever been successful in tracing a letter to any
publisher written by Emily, and in one of Charlotte's letters,
referring to the two books, she only mentions one sister as
having had any communication with the publishers,
which seems to imply that Anne took charge of Emily's
correspondence.

In a letter to G. H. Lewes, Charlotte Bronte, referring to her
first novel, The Professor, says —

" I determined to take Nature and Truth as my sole guides,
and to follow in their very footprints ; I restrained imagination,
eschewed romance, repressed excitement ; over-bright colour-
ing, too, I avoided, and sought to produce something which
should be soft, grave, and true."

She also mentions that six publishers refused it, and all
agreed that it was deficient in " startling incident " and
" thrilling excitement," and that it would never be acceptable
to the circulating libraries.

MSS. OF THE PROFESSOR 315

Mrs. Gaskell wished to see this nine- times refused novel,
when she was collecting the material for the biography, and
Mr. Nicholls said that she was anxious to edit it, and that
his refusal caused her to be prejudiced against him. There
is no doubt that Mrs. Gaskell was anxious to see the manuscript
of The Professor in order to find the reason for its repeated
refusal. Moreover, she was puzzled at Charlotte Bronte's
experience in Brussels, and she probably hoped to find from
the novel some key to her life during her first year at the Heger
pensionnat.

Though Charlotte Bronte probably felt that Madame Heger
had judged her harshly, she could not restrain the feeling of
gratitude towards M. Heger, and in The Professor she did
exactly what Anne had done when writing " Some Passages
in the Life of an Individual," the individual being herself.
So Charlotte followed the same plan, using the pseudonym of
William Crimsworth. Mr. Watts-Dunton says in his intro-
duction to The Professor and the Bronte Poems in The World's
Classics, that the fact that the hero of the story was a man,
and that the story read quite in the manner of an autobio-
graphical document, although the manuscript was in a woman's
handwriting, puzzled Mr. Williams, the reader for Smith,
Elder & Co. ; he could not make out whether Currer Bell was
a man or a woman.

William Crimsworth, like Jane Eyre and Heathclifi, was
an outcast, and it pleased Charlotte Bronte to look upon herself
in the same category, when she wrote her first Brussels novel.
The opening chapter is disappointing, although, according to
one of her letters, she had re- written it. William Crimsworth,
the counting-house clerk in a Yorkshire manufactory, was not
the type of character Charlotte Bronte could well understand.
None of her relatives had any experience of Yorkshire factory
life, though she may have known something of the Haworth
operatives ; her only direct knowledge of the woollen mills
was gained from the Taylors of Gomersal, who were
manufacturers.

They would probably talk of the doings of their employees
when Charlotte Bronte stayed with them, and the character

316 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTfiS

may have been suggested by Mr. Taylor and his sons, for Yorke-
Hunsden is said to have been founded on Mary Taylor's
father, who was somewhat of a " queer tyke." Whilst he
was a typical Yorkshireman, he had acquired a certain amount
of " polish " by his travels on the continent. He could speak
broad Yorkshire, or Parisian French equally well ; and it
was his knowledge of Brussels, Paris, Rome and other Euro-
pean capitals, that made Charlotte Bronte anxious to see those
places. Had she never known the Taylors, it is possible that
she would never have visited Brussels. Since Mary and
Martha Taylor went to school at Brussels, Charlotte Bronte
was extremely anxious to go too. In her novel, she adopts
with much skill the character of an English professor in the
Belgian school. Scenes are represented which actually
occurred in the course of her own life in the Pensionnat, but
from the first the reader has an aversion for Mdlle Zoraide
Reuter, and in the story in which Charlotte Bronte is restrained,
stiff, and in some places awkward, she never hesitates to draw
the Belgian schoolmistress with a poisoned pen.

Some parts of the story are as good as, if not better than,
anything Charlotte Bronte wrote. Frances Evans-Henri,
the little lace-mender, is a beautifully drawn character, and it,
no doubt, owes much to Emily Bronte, who was the quiet,
clever, industrious pupil at the pensionnat, when Charlotte
was also there.

Charlotte and Emily Bronte had meant to have a school,
and just as Anne's story of Agnes Grey drifts into school-
keeping, which had been the dream of the sisters so long, so
William Crimsworth and the little lace-mender drift into a
school ; Lucy Snowe also concludes with a little private school,
and even the second Cathy in Withering Heights adopts the
role of teacher and instructs Hareton Earnshaw.

Charlotte Bronte might well say that something like des-
pair seized her when she found that Agnes Grey and Wuthering
Heights were accepted, whilst her own ambitious novel^could
not find a home anywhere. Miss Sinclair says that the critics
forget that The Professor was the first novel written by
Charlotte Bronte after her hurried flight from Brussels, and if

THE PROFESSOR 317

she had been " sorely wounded " in her affections she would
surely have shown it in her first novel. It must be remembered
that Charlotte Bronte was not only " sorely wounded," but
she was ill for the two years after leaving Brussels, and her
writing was mostly sentimental poetry. The poem entitled
" Frances " tells her heart secret. It was not until she had
had a holiday at Hathersage that she regained her health.

It is foolish to say that The Professor was written with a
special motive, for as Charlotte Bronte had decided to write
a novel, her thoughts naturally turned to Brussels, and as
Madame Heger could not be left out, the suppression of the
correspondence between her husband and his former pupil
made it well nigh impossible for Charlotte to write of her
kindlyt That Madame Heger was treated still worse in
Villette is another story, which will be discussed later.

The Professor has always been considered Charlotte Bronte's
first novel, because it was first submitted to the publishers,
but she was very emphatic in her preface to state that " a first
attempt it was not." The original title was The Master, which
could only refer to her " master in literature," M. Heger, but
M. Pelet is a very poor character compared with Paul Emanuel.

Though there is much depicted in The Professor of the actual
intercourse between M. Heger and Charlotte Bronte, and
undoubtedly of M. Heger and Emily Bronte, yet it is difficult
to think of the untamed Emily Bronte, according to Mrs.
GaskelPs account, as the quiet Frances of The Professor, and
there is more of Charlotte Bronte in William Crimsworth than
in any other character.

- The principal male characters to be found in Charlotte
Bronte's great novels were those drawn from M. Heger — M.
Pelet, Rochester, Robert Moore, Louis Moore and Paul
Emanuel ; whilst the women were either drawn from her
own life as Jane Eyre, Caroline Helstone and Lucy Snowe, or
from that of Emily as Shirley Keeldar and Frances. Why
Jane Eyre should have been such a contrast to the mildness
of The Professor, which reads like a French devoir, is given in
Charlotte Bronte*'s own explanation —

"A first attempt it certainly was not, as the pen which

318 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

wrote it had been previously worn a good deal in a practice of
some years. I had not indeed published anything before I
commenced The Professor, but in many a crude effort, destroyed
almost as soon as composed, I had got over any such taste
as I might once have had for ornamented and redundant
compositions, and come to prefer what was plain and homely.
At the same time I had adopted a set of principles on the
subject of incident, &c., such as would be generally approved
in theory, but the result of which, when carried out into practice,
often procures for an author more surprise than pleasure.

k< I said to myself that my hero should work his way through
life as I had seen real living men work theirs — that he should
never get a shilling he had not earned — that no sudden turns
should lift him in a moment to wealth and high station ; that
whatever small competency he might gain should be won by
the sweat of his brow ; that, before he could find so much as
an arbour to sit down in, he should master at least half the
ascent of * the Hill of Difficulty ' ; that he should not even
marry a beautiful girl or a lady of rank. As Adam's son, he
should share Adam's doom, and drain throughout life a mixed
and moderate cup of enjoyment."

The novel was planned on stated lines, and it i£ not to be
wondered at that it is so unlike the great masterpieces, Jane
Eyre and Villette, which were written at white heat. The
Professor and Shirley were made, whilst Jane Eyre and Villette
were born. The novelist's determination to keep within certain
rules in the writing of The Professor shows her desire to make
a story, and to avoid revealing her heart's secret.

The absorbing work of preparing the book found occupation
for Charlotte at a time when, to use her own words, " she
needed a stake in life," and the publishing venture directed
her thoughts away from M. Heger who had haunted her night
and day for nearly two years.

The Professor has always been taken as the forerunner of
Villette, but in direct opposition to Villette Charlotte tried to
write from without rather than within, just as later she tried
the same plan in Shirley.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND MADAME HEGER 319

William Crimsworth is Charlotte Bronte masquerading as
M. Heger, and Frances Evans-Henri, the little lace-mender,
is Emily Jane Bronte, who was a pupil, and also a teacher of
music.

During the first year at Brussels, Emily attracted more
attention from M. and Madame Heger than Charlotte, and she
showed more aptitude for a literary career than her sister.
If " Frances Evans Henri " is studied she answers to Emily
Bronte.

Evidently Madame Heger concluded that Emily meant to
earn her living by literature, and that Charlotte was keen to
become a teacher. In Chapter XVIII of The Professor,
Charlotte gives Mdlle Renter's views on literature as a career
for a woman. " It appears to me that ambition, literary
ambition especially, is not a feeling to be cherished in the
mind of a woman." When we remember that The Pro-
fessor was written just after Charlotte's disappointment in
not receiving an answer from her letters to M. Heger, and that
she had the impression that Madame Heger was responsible,
it is easy to see that she could not write kindly of Madame
Heger ; and yet in The Professor she had the curb on the rein,
and was very careful how she wrote of M. Pelet, who does
not fit M. Heger as Charlotte knew him, but she evidently
tried to picture his life before she went to Brussels, and before
he married the schoolmistress, except that she reverses the
situation and makes M. Pelet the head of the school and
Mdlle Zoraide Reuter one of his teachers.

Charlotte has tried to hide her own identity all the way
through the novel, but she fails, when she writes : " God knows
I am not by nature vindictive," and again, " Not that I nursed
vengeance — no ; but the sense of insult and treachery lived
in me like a kindling, though as yet smothered coal " which
explains her feeling at the time. It is this trying to write
from without, and throw the actual scenes back, that proved
Charlotte's undoing in The Professor ; it is not real enough, and
she never excelled except in writing autobiographicaUy. It
is Emily she tries to describe, and it is her experience during
the Brussels period that Charlotte tries to give.

320 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

It is clearly of Emily she is thinking when she writes of the
conversation between Hunsden and Frances —

" If Abdiel the Faithful himself " (she was thinking of Milton)
" were suddenly stripped of the faculty of association, I think
he would soon rush forth from ' the ever-during gates,' leave
heaven, and seek what he had lost in hell. Yes, in the very
hell from which he turned ' with retorted scorn.'

" Frances' tone in saying this was as marked as her language,
and it was when the word ' hell ' twanged off from her lips, with
a somewhat startling emphasis, that Hunsden deigned to bestow
one slight glance of admiration. He liked something strong,
whether in man or woman. ... He had never before heard
a lady say ' hell ' with that uncompromising sort of accent.
. . . The display of eccentric vigour never gave her pleasure,
and it only sounded in her voice or flashed in her countenance
when extraordinary circumstances — and those generally pain-
ful— forced it out of the depths, where it burned latent. To
me, once or twice, she had, in intimate conversation, uttered
venturous thoughts in nervous language ; but when the hour
of such manifestation was past, I could not recall it ; it came
of itself and of itself departed."

This fits the Emily Bronte of Wuthering Heights, for whom
Charlotte found it out of her power to apologise for the using
of " those expletives with which profane and violent persons
are wont to garnish their discourse."

After the repeated rejection of The Professor Charlotte
Bronte set to work on Jane Eyre, and in the summer of 1847
it was accepted, being published before either Wuthering
Heights or Agnes Grey. On that remarkable novel her fame
was assured. Recently, a first edition of Jane Eyre was sold
for £27. It is probable that there are more anecdotes associated
with the first reading of this novel than gather around any
other, which testifies to its absorbing interest and to the force
with which it carries its readers onward.

CHAPTER XXIV

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

AUTHORSHIP of the novel — Various claims examined — Charlotte
Bronte's testimony — Late recognition of Emily Bronte's genius —
Swinburne's opinion of the novel — M. Heger's influence on Emily
Bronte — Poem by Emily Bronte — Charlotte's discovery of some
of Emily's poems — Emily's position at home — Her workshop and
material.

AMONG all the novels of the nineteenth century, none has
awakened greater curiosity than Wuthering Heights. Even
to-day, sixty-six years after it was written, the authorship is
questioned. Four different members of the Bronte family —
Charlotte, Emily, Branwell and Anne — have each been credited
with the writing of it, and supposed proofs have been
accumulated, the effect of which would be to deny the author-
ship to Emily Bronte, who undoubtedly wrote the novel
as it now stands under the nom de guerre of Ellis Bell.

Not only has the authorship been a source of mystery, as
well as the pseudonym of the writer, but the places mentioned
in the story have never yet been traced to any satisfactory
originals, and the supporters of different theories have been
divided into opposite camps, but, when it is remembered that
the souls that create permanent literature know no geographical
boundaries, it is not to be wondered at. Parson Grimshaw's
house, Sowdens, on the moors, not far from the Haworth
Vicarage with the initials H. E., 1659, carved on, which may
or may not stand for the original " Hareton Earnshaw, 1500,"
though " the crumbling griffins and shameless little boys "
are not there : Law Hill, Southowram : the Withens, a small
lonely farmstead on the Haworth Moors, some three or four
miles from the village, have all been claimed as the original
of Wuthering Heights, which is, however, a composite picture,
owing something to the three places mentioned. The name
Heathcliff is significant, for he partakes of " the heath with its
blooming bells and balmy fragrance, which grows faithfully
close to the giant's foot " to quote Charlotte Bronte, and of

321

21— (2300)

322 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

the cliff or crag, which " stands colossal, dark, and frowning,
half statue, half rock."

Emily meditated on actual people, just as Charlotte did for
her characters, and it is because Emily used the same original,
though under totally different aspects, for her great novel, as
Charlotte did for her three stories, each being a variation of
the same person, that confusion has arisen regarding the author-
ship of Wuthering Heights. Also Emily used Charlotte's
passionate dreams and deliriums of the period when she was
breaking her heart for news from M. Heger, which material
Charlotte afterwards used in Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette.

" Joseph," the Yorkshire servant, is a masterpiece, dour
and dogged, and of a type fast passing away ; he was what
Charlotte called " a ranting Methodist." Emily eclipsed that
in her description. " He was, and is yet most likely, the
wearisomest, self-righteous pharisee that ever ransacked
a Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses
on his neighbours." Joseph owed something to Old Tabby,
who ruled the parsonage, but was jealous of the honour of the
Brontes. The Yorkshire dialect which Joseph uses in the
first edition is correct, and Charlotte did not improve matters
by altering it in a later edition, though perhaps she made it
more intelligible to all but Yorkshire folk. Nelly Dean is far
too accomplished a story-teller to be a Yorkshire servant at
the latter end of the eighteenth century, but it was a clever
device for Emily Bronte to put the story in the mouth of
one of the servants, though she herself is the real story-teller,
for she was the actual nurse to the original of Cathy ; parts
of the narrative as told by Nelly cannot be excelled for original
power in any prose of the nineteenth century. The novel
stands alone ; it cannot be put into any category, for it is
without kith or kindred ; it belongs to no school, and is
supremely indifferent to time, but it is the soul-fact that
matters in this great novel, as also in Charlotte's stories.

The authorship was first falsely claimed for Branwell Bronte,
and, in connection with this, it is interesting to note that Mr.
Francis A. Leyland and Mr . Francis H. Grundy, who both knew

AUTHORSHIP OF THE NOVEL 323

Branwell Bronte, thought they could trace his pen in some
of the phrases, and, indeed, they stated that Branwell had
read parts of the story to them. This may have been quite
possible, for it is very probable that parts of an earlier version
were to be found in the parsonage, and he may have taken
them and read them to his friends. He may, unwittingly,
have contributed something to the story by his wild tales
of the lonely homesteads on the moors around Haworth.
Anyone who has read any of his poetry, or unpublished
prose, needs little persuasion to convince himself, beyond
a shadow of doubt, that Branwell could not possibly have
written Wuthering Heights. Of late years Charlotte Bronte
has been claimed as the author, solely because some of the
scenes and characters have something in common with Jane
Eyre, but it is ample tribute to the genius of Emily Bronte
that it has taken more than sixty years before anyone has
noted the marked resemblance between some of the scenes
in both novels to suggest a common authorship, though
Sydney Dobell mentioned a certain similarity as far back as
1848. When Charlotte Bronte denied the authorship, he accepted
her statement, but wished to discuss the novel with her later.

Miss Rigby, in the Quarterly Review, had also noted the like-
ness between Jane and Rochester on the one hand, and Cathy
and Heathcliff on the other, and they certainly are akin.

The force and passion of Wuthering Heights are so immeasur-
ably above what is to be found in Charlotte Bronte's novels
that it cannot be said for a moment to come from the same
pen. Whilst Charlotte's novels breathe the spirit of revolt,
Emily's novel passionately makes for freedom and liberty.
The great poetic and passionate scenes are elemental and
easily seen by those who understand, but place and time
are of no moment.

Instead of claiming that Charlotte Bronte wrote Wuthering
Heights, it would probably be nearer the truth to say that
Emily assisted Charlotte to write Jane Eyre, for, after Emily's
death, Charlotte refers to the terrible time she went through
when writing Villette, because she had no one with whom she
could discuss the manuscript as was the case with Jane Eyre and

324 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

two-thirds of Shirley. It is certain her father and Anne
could not help, so it must have been Emily.

Seeing that Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were both
accepted at the same time, and that The Professor was rejected
over and over again, Charlotte must have copied the spirit of
Emily's novel, when writing Jane Eyre, for Agnes Grey was
evidently not good enough for a model. Emily Bronte wrote
without any thought of the critic ; Charlotte wrote The Professor
with the critic at her elbow.

To Sydney Dobell belongs the honour of first directing
attention to the real genius of the work of Emily Bronte,
but, as Wuthering Heights was published three months after
Jane Eyre (although it had been accepted three months before),
Mr. Dobell made the mistake of thinking that Wuthering
Heights was an earlier attempt at writing a novel by the author
of Jane Eyre, and that, as Jane Eyre had been so readily
accepted, Wuthering Heights was offered under the shadow
of the great success. Charlotte Bronte denied this, whilst
warmly thanking Mr. Dobell for his just and well-merited
critique. Emily Bronte, the author of the novel, never heard
one word of commendation, for she was dead before the world
recognised her great ability either as a poet or a novelist.

For a good reason known to Charlotte, Emily Bronte never,
by word or pen, acknowledged the authorship ; it was sent
out as the work of Ellis Bell, and only as such was she
determined that it should be known. Emily never approved
of the sisters disclosing their real names.

When Mr. Williams, of Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., suggested
that Emily Bronte should accept an invitation to London,
Charlotte hastened to tell him that it would be quite useless
to ask her, as she was absolutely certain that Emily would not
be interviewed, and when he called Charlotte's attention
to the reviews — notably that of the Athenaeum — which showed
how puzzled the reviewers were concerning the three Brontes,
wondering if they were three brothers or three sisters, or one
person writing under three different names, Charlotte only
laughed, and remarked that they preferred to be known as
authors, whether men or women was immaterial.

MR. WILLIAMS AND EMILY BRONTE 325

However, Mr. Williams seems to have got the impression
that either there was no such person as the one who wrote
under the nom de guerre of Ellis Bell, or else that Charlotte
had some share in the authorship, for she had written to say
that she ought not to have admitted, at the time when she
and Anne paid their hurried visit to London in July, 1848,
that there were three sisters. She explained that she inad-
vertently mentioned it, and she requested that Mr. Williams
should never write of Emily Bronte, but only of Ellis Bell,
and that he was not under any circumstances to use the word
sisters in his correspondence with her, but to speak of one
sister only. It is also strange that no correspondence has
ever been revealed between Emily Bronte and any publisher.
Charlotte appears to have acted as editor and correspondent
for the three novels, and, after Wuthering Heights and Agnes
Grey were accepted, Anne attended to the publisher's
correspondence.

Then, again, Charlotte wrote to Mr. Williams saying that she
had no real claim to be known as the author of Wuthering
Heights and Agnes Grey, though she should not be ashamed
to be known as such, but that, if she did claim the novels as
hers, she would deprive the true authors of their just meed.1
The question arises, what share had Charlotte in the novel ?
Did Emily use certain material written by Charlotte first and
rewrite it in her own way, or did Charlotte act as editor and
revise the manuscript before it was sent out ? There is no
doubt that Charlotte had some share in it, but not in the
writing of it as it now stands.

With regard to the claim made on behalf of Anne Bronte,
that was advanced by the publishers in America, when her
Tenant of Wild fell Hall was advertised as being by Acton Bell,
the author of Wuthering Heights, the English publishers,
Messrs. Newby, were to blame for giving the impression that
the writer of Jane Eyre was also the author of Wildfell Hall.
One reviewer turned the tables on Charlotte and criticised
Jane Eyre as being by the author of Wuthering Heights. The
three sisters worked together and evidently helped one another ;

1 The Brontes : Life and Letters, by Clement K. Shorter.

326 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Emily was the greatest genius, but Charlotte knew more of
the world, and she was the most prolific writer, judging by the
number of manuscripts left by her.

All this mystery has been increased by the fact that no MS.
of Wuthering Heights has ever been found, either in the hand-
writing of Emily or her sisters, and the theory is often advanced
that Charlotte destroyed it after Emily's death. In addition,
no statement has been left by Emily Bronte to testify to the
fact that she and she only wrote Wuthering Heights. Charlotte
Bronte was certainly indignant that she should be credited
with the authorship, and when the third edition of Jane Eyre
was issued she added a modestly -worded disclaimer.

" I avail myself of the opportunity which a third edition of
Jane Eyre affords me, of again addressing a word to the Public,
to explain that my claim to the title of novelist rests on this
one work alone. If, therefore, the authorship of other works of
fiction has been attributed to me, an honour is awarded where it
is not merited ; and consequently, denied where it is justly due.

" This explanation will serve to rectify mistakes which
may already have been made, and to prevent future errors.'*

But this did not satisfy some of the critics. Therefore,
in 1850, Mr. George Smith asked Charlotte Bronte to write a
statement, settling the question of the authorship of the
Bronte novels once for all.

Charlotte Bronte's denial of the authorship of Wuthering
Heights must stand for all time as the literal truth concerning
the question. Of course, there is her statement that she had
no real claim to it, and what she means by that is easily seen,
for the two novels, though having something in common, are
so different in style and wording, that it would be difficult to
prove that the same pen could have written both. Charlotte,
proud of her French and of her knowledge of books, could
scarcely have avoided betraying her inclination when writing
the novel.

Emily evidently had her own ideas of writing a prose story
of an outcast, in her own way. This would not be difficult,
for she had already composed several poems about a nameless

DENIAL OF THE AUTHORSHIP 327

outcast of the moors, and it is noticeable that she had an ideal
lover, judging by her earlier poems.

When writing her devoirs at Brussels, she would change not
only the style of the composition read to her, but also the
subject, and characteristically she decided to write a novel
quite removed from her sisters, both in style, subject and time,
for she ante-dates her story to the latter part of the eighteenth
century ; but she keeps to the family model of an outcast, and
places him on the Yorkshire Moors, which was her little world
in which she could revel to her heart's content. Compared
with Charlotte's boast, that she would make her plain little
heroine, Jane Eyre, as attractive as her sister's more beautiful
heroines, the hero Heathcliff is a suburb masterpiece. Could
there be any hero so debased as the wretched little gutter child
that old Earnshaw unrolled from his cloak " as black as if he
came from the devil " ? Yet all through the story he holds
the reader spell-bound without any physical attractions, but
with a passionate love that excels that of any other hero in
fiction. Emily Bronte's fame as the greatest novelist of
the nineteenth century rests on this one great character alone.

Both Charlotte and Branwell Bronte seem to have some sort
of connection with the plot, but not with the actual writing
of the story. In the first chapter, Lockwood is summing up
Heathcliff's character. " He'll love and hate equally under
cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or
hated again. No, I'm running on too fast ; I bestow my
own attributes over liberally on him." This is undoubtedly
Emily Bronte's own estimate of herself ; she dwelt apart
and was reserved and silent. Then Lockwood, who is the
narrator, goes on to say, " While enjoying a month of fine
weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a
most fascinating creature : a real goddess in my eyes, as long
as she took no notice of me. I ' never told my love ' vocally ;
still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have
guessed I was over head and ears ; she understood me at last,
and looked a return — the sweetest of all imaginable looks.
And what did I do ? I confess it with shame — shrunk icily
into myself, like a snail ; at every glance retired colder and

328 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

farther ; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own
senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed
mistakes, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious
turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate
heartlessness ; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate."

In a long letter, written on 20th November, 1840, Charlotte
Bronte gives some very sage advice to Ellen Nussey on love
and marriage, and she surely refers to Lock wood in Wuthering
Heights and to Branwell Bronte in real life when she says,
" Did I not once tell you of an instance of a relative of mine
who cared for a young lady, until he began to suspect that she
cared more for him, and then instantly conceived a sort of
contempt for her ? You know to whom I allude — Never as
you value your ears mention the circamstance." l

Both Branwell and Charlotte Bronte had had experiences of
haunted rooms, or thought they had ; Branwell once slept
in a haunted room at Haworth and was much frightened,
and Charlotte was prone to see ghosts at Roe Head and Brussels.
Then Branwell's mad passion for his employer's wife could not
but influence Emily's version of Heathcliff's regard for
Catherine, when she was the wife of another ; but the purity
of the passion depicted by Emily is far above Branwell's
infatuation for Mrs. Robinson ; and, though Sir Wemyss Reid
found in Branwell Bronte's letters certain phrases used by
Heathcliff, it does not prove that he had written a line of the
novel.

Just as Emily Bronte's poems are greatly superior to
Charlotte's and Anne's, so her novel shows much greater
genius than anything written by her sisters.

Emily's one novel is full of strength and power, and yet
there is not the faintest suggestion of impropriety ; it is, as
Swinburne says, " pure mind and passion," which only a great
genius could depict. (The love between Cathy and Heathcliff
is of the essence of purity, and represents soul speaking to soul.
It is the, scenes that are remembered apart from the actual
wording. Charlotte speaks of the relation between Heathcliff
and Cathy as inhuman, but her Rochester imitates it, though

1 The Brontes : Life and Letters, by Clement K. Shorter.

DELAY IN RECOGNISING EMILY'S GENIUS 329

he never soars to the heights that Heathcliff reaches. Cathy
and Jane have much in common, the difference mainly repre-
senting that which separates the two writers. Emily was a
child of the moors — original, crude, fierce — but true to her
natural gifts. The very childishness of parts of the novel
proves its essence of purity, and its naturalness. Charlotte's
novel was the creation of a mind that had been tamed ; that
had tried to conform to the rules of society. Roe Head,
Stonegappe, Rawdon, and most of all Brussels had influenced
Charlotte, and she never shook herself quite free. She told
Mrs. Gaskell that her most vivid scenes were thought out night
after night, and that in the morning she awoke with it all clear
in her mind. She also told Mrs. Gaskell that on sleepless
nights she wrote down her thoughts. It was not so with
Emily ; (from the moment Nelly Dean, the old servant, takes
up the story, it seems to be told almost in one breath. It has
been said that Emily was not influenced by those she met,
but in Brussels she found in M. Heger a character that suggested
Heathcliff, or rather that fitted in with her imaginary lover,
mentioned over and over again 'in the poems, written when
she was little more than a child. Emily knew that M. Heger
had suffered and borne his grief alone.

Emily Bronte's recognition as a great genius has been long
delayed, but her fame is established, and her life as it is revealed,
bit by bit, shows a brave, good woman, domesticated, affection-
ate, loyal and true, in spite of a certain harshness and a mascu-
line demeanour. Mrs. Gaskell never really grasped Emily's
character, and her remarks on Wuthering Heights showed that
she did not quite approve of it. Yet the plot of the story
appealed to her so forcibly that she modelled her Sylvia's
Lovers on it. Cathy, the winsome, mischievous, heroine, and
Sylvia have much in common. Heathcliff and Kinraid each
love the heroine of the story — who is courted by a richer
lover, Edgar Linton in the one, and Philip Hepburn in the
other — and afterwards they go away and are not heard of
again for some time. In each case the discarded lover returns
after the marriage of the heroine, and there is a painful scene.
Though the return of Kinraid is the most dramatic part of

330 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Sylvia's Lovers, it does not approach by a long way the passion
of HeathclifPs return to Cathy.

Wuthering Heights must stand alone as a great tragedy,
worthy of the author of King Lear himself.

Swinburne, Emily Bronte's greatest critic, has said, " Those
who have come to like Wuthering Heights will probably never
like anything else much better ; the novel is what it is because
the author is what she is." Until Swinburne gave his
magnificent critique on this extraordinary novel, the world had
almost passed it by, for Sydney DobelFs splendid appreciation
in 1850 had almost been forgotten, and his eulogium is marred
by his suspicion that Charlotte had written the story. His
reasoning is the work of a genius, and so far as the introduction
of the story goes he may be right, for a fragment of an unpub-
lished story by Charlotte Bronte has a somewhat similar
beginning. Added to this is the account of Charlotte's dreams
and deliriums, and of Shirley Keeldar's dreams and visions.

The four letters written by Charlotte Bronte to M. Heger,
which have recently been published in The Times (July, 1913),
throw a light on Wuthering Heights.

When Charlotte Bronte left Brussels on the last day of
1843 in distress, she arrived at Ha worth ill and dejected ;
there was the brave Emily and the father to receive her, but
it is certain she would not confide in her father.

As these two sisters walked on the moors, it cannot be
doubted that Charlotte — the impulsive, eager, passionate,
Charlotte — poured out her reasons for leaving Brussels to Emily,
who with her sympathetic feeling heard the story of her
sister's grief, and her whole soul revolted that she should have
suffered so cruelly. The Times letters refer to Charlotte's
conversation with Emily about M. Heger. It must be remem-
bered that Emily Bronte* knew M. Heger, which helped her to
realise the position much better. M. Heger was unstinting
in his praise of Emily when Mrs. Gaskell interviewed him,
and Emily would not have been a woman if she had not
recognised that M. Heger admired her great powers. Was
it the case of Shirley Keeldar unconsciously attracting the
love of Robert Gerard Moore, to the grief and sorrow of Caroline

EMILY BRONTE'S "HEAVEN" 331

Helstone as revealed at the close of Chapter XXIII in Shirley ?
Who knows ? Certain it is that, as Shirley Keeldar was superior
to Caroline Helstone in personal and intellectual qualities,
so was Emily Bronte superior to Charlotte. Had Emily
experienced a brief gleam of love either in Brussels or else-
where ? And was that her Heaven that she dreamt of, a
case of soul recognising soul as a kindred spirit ?
• " I dreamt once that I was there. ... I was only going to
say that heaven did not seem to be my home ; and I broke my
heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels
were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the
heath on the top of Wuthering Heights ; where I awoke sobbing
for joy . That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other."
Mrs. Humphry Ward interpreted this to mean that Emily
preferred the moors to Heaven, but that is not so. Emily
Bronte's Heaven was where, like Cathy, she found her affinity.

" O could it thus for ever be,

That I might so adore ;
I'd ask for all eternity,
To make a paradise for me,
My love — and nothing more/'

She wrote these lines in 1843 whilst Charlotte was in Brussels.
In the last chapter of Wuthering Heights when Heathcliff is
dying, and he welcomes death as he hopes to meet Cathy, he
says, " I tell you I have nearly attained my heaven ; and that
of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me."

Emily Bronte's heaven was to be with the spirit of the ideal
she loved. In the memorable conversation between Cathy
and Nelly Dean, when Cathy tells her that she intends to marry
Edgar Linton, Emily Bronte gives the highest conception of
passionate love ever written ; Wagner and Shelley have a
similar idea of the passion, but they do not show the masterful
force that is Emily Bronte's.

In speaking of Heathcliff, Cathy says : "If all else perished,
and he remained, I should still continue to be ; and if all
else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would
turn to a mighty stranger : I should not seem a part of it," and
in her immortal " Last Lines " she writes —

332 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONT&S

" Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou were left alone,

Every existence would exist in Thee."

These two quotations prove that the same mind had inspired
the mighty words, and show that the lover Heathcliff is put
in the place of God.

In the French translation of Wuthering Heights the title is
L'Amant, and certainly it gives a better description of the
novel, for it is more about a lover than a building or a
district. In Shirley, Charlotte Bronte puts into the mouth
of the little cripple, " I'll write a book that I may dedicate it
to you," and Shirley replies, " You will write it, that you may
give your soul its natural release," and that is just what Emily
has done.

Devotees of Emily Bronte have searched far and wide for the
man who inspired her to create a Heathcliff. Look around
on her limited male acquaintances and who was there that could
for a moment appreciate and understand her as it is known
M. Heger did ? He placed her not only above Charlotte,
but above all women : " She ought to have been a man, a great
navigator." Mrs. Gaskell never explained why M. Heger
was so eager to praise Emily, and why he gave such scant
praise to Charlotte. In Shirley the two Moores, Robert and
Louis, are presented as being so alike as to be taken the one
for the other, and Caroline is surprised that Shirley has kept
the secret of having known Robert's brother. Was this the
explanation of Emily's secret that she found her ideal in
Brussels, but could not stay there, and was glad to get back to
her moorland home ? Unfortunately there is but one letter
from Emily after her stay in Brussels besides her novel and
poems. Those written in Brussels in 1843 when she was with
her father are all sad enough, and the question arises if Emily
suffered in 1843 as Charlotte did in 1844.

Who but M. Heger could have stood as the original of Heath-
cliffe ? A strong, powerful tyrant, with the pure and fierce
love of a very god, albeit he had the mind of a little child.

Witness his passionate tears when his pupils could not

HEATHCLIFF 333

understand the beauty of his rendering of choice literature,
and his beautifully expressed letter of condolence to Mr. Bronte
when Miss Bran well died. On the other hand, one of his
pupils told me he was a terror to the dull pupils, or to those
he did not like.

Charlotte in one of her letters says that Mary Taylor has
no one like M. Heger to be kind to her and lend her books ;
and her letter to Ellen Nussey on leaving Brussels points
in the Same direction. " I shall not forget what the parting
with M. Heger cost me, it grieved me so much to grieve him,
who has been so true, kind and disinterested a friend." Yet
another time she says, " He is a professor of rhetoric, a man of
power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable in tempera-
ment ; a little black being, with a face that varies in expression.
Sometimes he borrows the lineaments of an insane tom-cat,
sometimes those of a delirious hyena." Certainly extremes
meet in such a character, as they did in Heathcliff .

Now turn to Emily's Wuthering Heights where she speaks of
Heathcliff as " a dark-skinned gipsy," and again as " the little
black-haired swarthy thing as dark almost as if it came from
the devil," and then read of his agony by Cathy's grave. Both
Charlotte and Emily tried to get the germ of a character by
tracing it from its childhood. Charlotte only met Mr. George
Smith when he was twenty-three, yet she tries to write of
him as Graham Bretton when a schoolboy. More than once
in Villette she describes Paul Emanuel as being of Spanish
descent, but in a few words Emily conveys the impression
of Ms ancestors. Charlotte, in her explanation of the
authorship of Wuthering Heights, says, " It was said that this
was an earlier and ruder attempt of the same pen which
had produced Jane Eyre. Unjust and grievous error ! We
laughed at it at first, but I deeply lament it now." The
laughing point was that the critics had seen the similarity in
certain scenes, but they did not discover that the two sisters
had the same models for the chief characters of the stories,
though Cathy and Jane are as different as Emily and Charlotte
Bronte : one is " a wild slip of a girl," who loves to wander
over the moors ; the other " the staid little governess."

334 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Long before Emily Bronte went to Brussels she had cherished
an idea of a noble being with a soul that could take flights
like her own, and reach to a Heaven of pure passion, and in an
unpublished MS. by Charlotte, written in 1834, she also
had her idea of an imaginary hero, which|fits M. Heger in
many ways.

M. Heger was the first man to approach Emily Bronte's
ideal, and he saw in her a spirit that could mate with his own.
She, like Cathy, recognised a kindred spirit in him. Frances
in The Professor, and Shirley Keeldar in Shirley, where she is
pupil to Louis Moore, are based upon Emily Bronte's life at
Brussels. Whether she realised M. Heger's influence before
she left Brussels in October, 1842, or not is not plain, but her
high moral rectitude kept her from returning to Brussels; and
with characteristic self-effacement she let Charlotte go alone,
who in a letter written years afterwards called it " selfish folly."
Anne could have taken Emily's place at home, if Emily had
chosen to return with Charlotte, for Anne was far from happy
at Thorpe Green, and the father could have spared Emily
and probably would have preferred her to accompany Charlotte.
It is very probable that Charlotte Bronte never found out
Emily's secret, until she discovered the poems which Emily
guarded so carefully, but, as Charlotte Bronte says in her
preface to Wuthering Heights, " The writer who possesses the
creative gift owns something of which he is not always master."
Wuthering Heights is what it is, not only because the
author is what she is, but because of what the author knew
and experienced during her life.

If Emily Bronte must write a novel, then, like her sister, she
must write from the heart, using the experience of which she
was conscious. When Lockwood first met Heathcliff he says,
" Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style
of living. He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and
manners a gentleman : that is, as much a gentleman as many
a country squire : rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking
amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome
figure ; and rather morose. Possibly, some people might suspect
him of a degree of underbred pride; I have a sympathetic

EMILY BRONTE AND M. HEGER 335

chord within that tells me it is nothing of the sort : I know,
by instinct that his reserve springs from an aversion to showy
displays of feeling — to manifestations of mutual kindliness."

That is just what Emily Bronte could and would say on
meeting M. Heger, for former pupils testify to M. Heger 's
negligence in dress, and Charlotte tells us he did not speak to
them for three months after they became his pupils, only
writing his remarks of their devoirs on the margin of their
exercise books. Emily Bronte was only nine months in
Brussels, and six weeks of this period was vacation, when
M. Heger was away from the pensionnat, so that he did not
have much to do with the two sisters during the remaining
four months. M. Heger advised M. PAbbe Richardson,
when beginning his career as a teacher, to spend the first
fortnight studying the temperament, idiosyncrasies, ability
and habits of his pupils, but a fortnight did not suffice for M.
Heger to study the Brontes ; it took him three months, and
then he must have proceeded warily. When Mrs. Gaskell
interviewed him he had gauged Emily's character with surpris-
ing accuracy, but it has taken the world more than half a
century to come to the just conclusion that M. Heger formed
in these few months.

Charlotte Bronte's longing for love as expressed in her novels
was quite as real to Emily, and possibly felt with more
intensity. The poem, The Old Stoic, was written in 1845.

On 17th May, 1842, Emily Bronte wrote a poem at Brussels,
which helps to prove that she had had a vision of perfect
love in Brussels, and this poem shows that none but Emily
could have written Wuthering Heights, though the sex of the
actors is changed. It was well known in Brussels that M. Heger
had lost his young wife nine years before the Brontes went,
and it was known that the loss had nearly overwhelmed
him, and it was probably the knowledge of this love story that
prompted Emily to write this poem —

" In the same place, when nature wore

The same celestial glow,
I'm sure I've seen these forms before
But many springs ago ;

336 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

But only he had locks of light,

And she had raven hair ;
While now his curls are dark as night,

And hers as morning fair.

Besides, I've dreamt of tears whose traces

Will never more depart,
Of agony that fast effaces

The verdure of the heart.

I dreamt one sunny day like this,
In this peerless month of May,

I saw her give th' unanswered kiss
As his spirit passed away.

Those young eyes that so sweetly shine
Then looked their last adieu,

And pale death changed that cheek divine
To his unchanging hue.

And earth was cast above the breast,
That once beat warm and true,

Where her heart found a living rest
That moved responsively.

Then she, upon the covered grave,
The grass-grown grave, did lie,

A tomb not girt by English wave,
Nor arched by English sky.

The sod was sparkling bright with dew,

But brighter still with tears,
That welled from mortal grief I know,

Which never heals with years.

And if he came not for her woe,

He would not now return ;
He would not leave his sleep below,

When she had ceased to mourn.

O Innocence, that cannot live
With heart-wrung anguish long,

Dear childhood's innocence forgive,
For I have done thee wrong !

EMILY BRONTE'S POEMS 337

The bright rosebuds, those hawthorn shrouds

Within their perfumed bower,
Have never closed beneath a cloud,

Nor bent beneath a shower.
Had darkness once obscured their sun

Or kind dew turned to rain,
No storm-cleared sky that ever shone

Could win such bliss again." l

Again in May, 1843, whilst Charlotte is away, Emily Bronte
writes a serenade, one verse of which reads —

" And neither Hell nor Heaven,

Though both conspire at last,
Can take the bliss that has been given,
Can rob us of the past." x

These are the thoughts expressed in Withering Heights.
On 28th July, 1843— two days before Emily Bronte's twenty-
fifth birthday, she writes —

" I know our souls are all divine,

I know that when we die
What seems the vilest, even like thine
A part of God himself shall shine
In perfect purity.

Let others seek its beams divine

In cell and cloister drear ;
But I have found a fairer shrine

And happier worship here.
By dismal rites they win their bliss,

By penance, fasts and fears ;
I have one rite — a gentle kiss ;

One penance — tender tears," l

and in the following year, 2nd March, 1844, three months
after Charlotte Bronte's return from Brussels, she writes —

" This summer wind with thee and me

Roams in the dawn of day ;
But thou must be, when it shall be,

Ere evening — far away.

The farewell's echo from thy soul

Should not depart before
Hills rise and distant rivers roll

Between us ever more.
1 Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, edited by Clement Shorter.

22 — (2200)

338 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

I know that I have done thee wrong,
Have wronged both thee and Heaven ;

And I may mourn my lifetime long
And may not be forgiven.

Repentant tears will vainly fall

To cover deeds untrue,
For by no grief can I recall

The dreary word adieu !

Yet those a future place shall win,

Because thy soul is clear ;
And I who had the heart to sin

Will find a heart to bear.

Till far beyond earth's frenzied strife,

That makes destruction joy,
Thy perished faith shall spring to life,

And my remorse shall die." 1

Emily Bronte has been treated as a visionary and a mystic,
with nothing definite and tangible about her, but, although
" she dwelt apart," she had a more intense and real affection
for the things that matter than most people.

" What my soul bore my soul alone
Within itself may tell."

The moorland was her home, and it was on those desolate
heights that she fought out her thoughts and conquered only
by death.

" There stands Sidonia's deity !
In all her glory, all her pride !
And truly like a god she seems.
Some lad of wild enthusiast's dream.
And this is she for whom he died !
For whom his spirit unforgiven
Wanders unsheltered, shut from heaven,
An outcast from eternity." l

Who but the creator of Heathcliff could have written those
lines ?

On the authority of members of the Heger family, Charlotte
Bronte told pitiful tales of her brother and of her home life
to the Hegers, and it is not too much to surmise that M. Heger.

1 Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, edited by Clement K. Shorter,

M. HEGER'S INFLUENCE 339

related some of his own early troubles in such a way as to
make an impression on the future novelists, for Charlotte
taught English to M. Chappel, whose wife was sister to M.
Heger's first wife.

Little did M. Heger recognise what his influence was with the
odd geniuses; what he told them became scenes for their
novels, their souls knew no geographical boundaries ; what they
had idealised and dreamt of in Haworth, they applied to the
religious, passionate " Master of literature," who, with all
his fierce passion, became Charlotte's " Christian hero " and
Emily's ideal lover.

When M. Heger died, it was recorded that after the death
of his first wife it was feared he would not survive ; he had to
find relief in work, which implies that his sorrow was so
great that he had to continually find something to assuage his
grief.

M. Heger evidently told Charlotte Bronte some facts con-
nected with his early life and the death of his first wife, and
Charlotte in turn related these to Emily, who with sympathetic
heart and keen intellect put them into her great novel.
Charlotte and Emily Bronte never knew anyone in Yorkshire
who loved as Heathcliff loved Cathy, but if they knew, as they
probably did, of M. Heger's overwhelming grief, it would fit
in with their conception of pure and undefiled love of one soul
for another. In Vittette, Charlotte Bronte tells of Paul
EmanuePs Justine Marie, whose spirit haunted him, and the
incident fits in with Cathy's spirit haunting Heathcliff.

Poetry, and the art which professes to regulate and limit its
powers, cannot subsist together. Emily Bronte had the true
lyric note, and the unseen had a greater fascination for her
than the mere sayings and doings of men. As a mystic she
valued the things that matter, and like all mystics she believed
that someway and somehow true love was returned. ) She was
right in agreeing with an unknown poet who sang —

" The knowledge gained at every turning,

On that high road by Science trod,
Serves but to increase our yearning
For light and liberty and God.

340 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Yet murmur not though knowledge only
The vastness of our ignorance prove,

For there's no soul so dark and lonely
But it can both be loved and love."

Shelley appealed to her, and the love between Heathcliff and
Cathy soars to the same heights that Shelley attains in
Epipsychidion — verses addressed to Emilia V. (or Emily as
he calls her later) in a convent.

"How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me !
I am not thine : I am a part of ihee"

Compare this with Cathy's vehement : " I am HeathclifE."
" He's more myself than I am."

And again, Shelley foreshadows the absolute unity of spirit
between Heathcliff and Cathy in his verses to Emilia.

" We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames. Oh ! wherefore two ?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
Till, like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured ; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable.

One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation."

Charlotte in one of her novels mentions Shirley's love for
Shelley as a poet. Undoubtedly this sorrow of M. Heger's
attracted both Charlotte and Emily. It has often been said,
if Emily had lived, how much more she could have given to the
world, even greater and better, but there is no evidence that
she was eager to write another novel. Unlike Charlotte and
Anne she was not anxious to write a second ; she had spent
her strength on her masterpiece. Nothing could have given a
greater conception of love between two spirits than that
depicted in her one great story. Mr. Malham-Dembleby
in his Key to the Bronte Works has travelled on the right road
when he shows that Heathcliff, Rochester, Robert Moore, and

EMILY BRONTE'S PERSONALITY 341

Paul Emanuel each owe something to M. Heger, but he does
not prove that Charlotte wrote Wuthering Heights. Wuthering
Heights is " pure mind and passion," to quote Swinburne again,
and the material things of life are so dwarfed in the story
that they hardly matter. (The intensity of the passion is the
dominating note of the novel, and after the death of Cathy
her spirit broods over the pages and is never absent. )
f Emily Bronte wrote from instinct) (No novelist can be
drawn to write of what repels her, and it is evident that Emily
had a conception of great beauty in the love between Cathy
and Heathcliff, and, if she must write a love story, it must
show the essence of true love as it appeared to her. J Charlotte
said later that Emily might have become a model essayist,
but it would not have been possible to tell a story of such
thrilling interest in an essay, f No form of literature other
than a novel could have been the medium for portraying such
a tragic tale of love and suffering ] /The personality of Emily
shines through the story, " moorish, wild and knotty as a root
of heather," and yet what a mind she had to conceive
characters like Heathcliff and Cathy ! "Stronger than a man,
simpler than a child." How her readers shudder under the
tyranny of Heathcliff, and tremble at the intensity of his
passion ; and, if those who read it feel it, what must have been
the thoughts of Emily as she wrote ? Charlotte tells in her
letters that when M. Heger was angry she cried, and that put
matters right, but Mrs. Gaskell says that Emily answered him
back, just as Cathy would have done. Some of the passages
are among the most sublime in the English language, and the
heights and depths are beyond ordinary comprehension/ It
is amateurish and wanting in technique, but so powerful
is the passion of the story that the construction of the plot does
not seem to matter. Emily's sympathy with her chief char-
acters, Cathy and Heathcliff, is intense, and it is that sympathy
which grips her readers, though some of the scenes are cruel
and appalling. )

There is more of the real Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights
than in any of her poems.' She associates this intense love
story with the moorland people at the end of the eighteenth

342 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES -

century, but the vital issue is from herself, and her hero is a
foreigner.

Having written this novel, she never wrote anything more
except the immortal " Last Lines." It has been said over
and over again, that Brussels made no impression on Emily
Bronte ; that cannot be proved. Granted that in her few
months at Brussels she made a greater impression on M. Heger
than Charlotte did in two years, it is unthinkable that she
did not receive much from her experience in Brussels that
altered her whole outlook on life. In the poems written by
Emily after her return from Brussels, there is a longing for
love, and a still greater longing for death.

Mr. Swinburne has written the most just criticism of Wuthcr-
ing Heights, and he concludes, " It may be true that not many
will ever take it to their hearts ; it is certain that those who do
like it will like nothing very much better in the whole world of
poetry or prose."

It is strange that Emily Bronte should have objected to
Charlotte seeing her poems, unless they contained something
which she wished to conceal. The one poem, written in
Brussels in May, 1842, and the poems written in the years 1843
to 1845, which include those written in the year that shfc was
alone with her father, point to her meditations on the over-
whelming sorrow for the loss of the loved one. Comparing
these poems with those written previous to her visit to Brussels
it is evident that M. Heger's love story which she had heard
in Brussels fitted her conception of a deathless love, and that
she idealised the wanderer on the moor by comparing him with
M. Heger.

" Listen ! I've known a burning heart,

To which my own was given ;
Nay, not with passion, do not start,
Our love was love from heaven/'

Again she writes —

" Angelica, from my very birth

I have been nursed in strife ;
And lived upon this weary Earth
A wanderer all my life.

MRS. GASKELL AND EMILY BRONTE 343

The baited tiger could not be

So much athirst for gore,
For men and laws have tortured me,

Till I can bear no more.

The guiltless blood upon my hands

Will shut me out from heaven,
And here, and even in foreign lands,

I cannot find a haven."1

On July 26th, 1843, Emily writes—

" Had there been falsehood in my breast

No doubt had marr'd my word ;
This spirit had not lost its rest,
Those tears had never flowed." x

Emily Bronte was not so visionary and introspective as she
has been described. People and places did affect her, though
not sufficiently to tempt her to reveal their identity/ and her
hard work in Brussels was not lost on her. Had she never
gone to Brussels, she would not have written her best poems —
The Old Stoic, Death, and the immortal Last Lines. Far
from being a mere dreamer, she has shown at her highest
a powerful grip of both worlds. Just as Charlotte Bronte
grew both in mind and soul, so did Emily ; it is idle to think
she differed so much from her family. Mrs. Gaskell has done
ill by Emily in describing her as hard, and as giving all her love
to animals ; but those who love animals cannot truly dislike
human beings, and Paul Emanuel is described by Charlotte as
having a great love for his little dog. In Chapter XII of Shirley,
M. Heger, as Robert Moore, is discussed by Caroline and
Shirley, and his love of animals is mentioned in his favour. Mrs.
Gaskell made a mistake in attributing this to Charlotte Bronte.

In Charlotte's letter, published in The Times on 29th July,
1913, she says, with reference to the starting of a school at the
Ha worth parsonage, " Emily does not care much for teaching,
but she would look after the housekeeping, and, although some-
thing of a recluse, she is too good-hearted not to do all she
could for the well-being of the children. Moreover she is very
generous." Good-hearted and generous ! those words describe
the " Sphinx of Literature," the incomparable Emily Bronte.

1 Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, by Clement K. Shorter.

344 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

In a conversation that I had with Martha Brown's sister,
she described Emily as being kind and generous to all in the
home, and she believed Emily died of a broken heart for
love of her brother Branwell, because she realised what he
might have been if he had been guided aright. It is strange
that it was Emily who had most sympathy for Branwell;
seeing Charlotte had suffered for love of her master, she ought
to have had more pity for her brother. Besides M. Heger's
story, and his passionate personality, Emily had two studies
before her — Charlotte's passion for M. Heger and Bran well's
for Mrs. Robinson — but Branwell was not in keeping with
her hero : he was too weak, and Charlotte's fierce passion
resulted in fevers, deliriums and bad dreams, caused by her
poignant regrets on leaving Brussels.

Cathy in Wuthering Heights trampled on every code of a
wife's duty to her husband, but if her delirium, in which she
fasted for three days, is studied, it is easy to see that Edgar
Linton is based upon old Patrick Bronte, who had a sad time
with his headstrong daughter. * Emily does not give anything
of a real husband's feelings in Edgar Linton's indifference
to Cathy's state after she locks herself in her own room, subse-
quent to her mad fit of temper, when she wishes to spite Edgar
by dying. This is not only a weak character, but it is treated
with lack of knowledge. ; Cathy says, " I'll choose between
these two : either to starve at once — that would be no punish-
ment unless he had a heart — or to recover and leave the
country."

" . . . . These three awful nights I've never closed my lids —
and oh, I've been tormented ! I've been haunted, Nelly !
But I begin to fancy you don't like me. How strange ! I
thought, though everybody hated and despised each other,
they could not avoid loving me. And they have all turned
to enemies in a few hours : they have, I'm positive ; the people
here. How dreary to meet death, surrounded by their cold
faces! Isabella, terrified and repelled, afraid to enter the
room, it would be so dreadful to watch Catherine go. And
Edgar standing solemnly by to see it over ; then offering
prayers of thanks to God for restoring peace to his house, and

EDGAR LINTON 345

going back to his books ! What in the name of all that feels
has he to do with books, when I am dying ? " Charlotte Bronte
says in one of her letters to M. Heger : " Oh, it is certain that
I shall see you again one day — it must be so — for as soon as I
shall have enough money to go to Brussels I shall go there —
and I shall see you again, if only for a moment " ; evidently
like Cathy she had resolved either to die or go to Brussels.

The incident of the two locks of hair which Nelly Dean
twisted together and enclosed in a locket worn by the dead
Cathy is mentioned in Shirley, and possibly has some connection
with Charlotte Bronte.

It was the sense of beauty — indispensable to the creative
artist — that Emily, with her visions, saw in Charlotte's dreams,
and in meditating on these, Emily created her novel. Charlotte
Bronte varied in her estimation of M. Heger just as Cathy did
in the case of Heathcliff. Did Charlotte find out that Emily
had some regard for M. Heger, and did Emily discover
Charlotte's secret from her deliriums ?

Emily describes Isabel Linton's admiration for Heathcliff,
and Cathy in her amazement pictures him to Isabel as " an
arid wilderness of furze and whinstone," whilst Isabel says,
" All, all is against me : she has blighted my single consolation.
But she uttered falsehoods, didn't she ? Mr. Heathcliff
is not a fiend : he has an honourable soul, and a true one."
Genius never fully discovers itself till brought into contact
with fellow genius, and both Emily and Charlotte found in
M. Heger a character that altered all their former opinions
of men. A novelist who sees something exciting in life,
cannot refrain from transmitting the vision to others ;
she must tell the story in some way. Emily had written
verses, but they did not convey all she wanted to tell, and, when
Charlotte suggested that the three sisters should each write
a novel, Emily had hers ready to hand. She had meditated
on M. Heger, on Charlotte and her fevers, dreams, and deliriums,
and on Bran well. All her life she had been brooding over the
mysteries of love and death, and when it is remembered that
Wuthering Heights was begun in the latter part of 1845, or
early in 1846, it is not a matter for surprise that " Over it

346 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

there broods a horror of great darkness," and that "in its
storm-heated and electrical atmosphere, we seem to breathe
lightning," to quote Charlotte Bronte, for it was in January,
1844, that Charlotte came home infatuated with her " Master,
and from that time to the end of 1845 she was frantic for letters
from him, and in the very depths of despair for a sight of
him — a monomaniac, as she describes herself. Charlotte
in some phases stood for Cathy, and Emily created the intensely
passionate Heathcliff to match her, but it is the spirit of the
two that matters to the exclusion of everything else.
In one of her poems Emily writes —

Watch in love by a fevered pillow,
Cooling the fever with pity's balm ;

Safe as the petrel on tossing billow,
Safe in mine own soul's golden calm !

Guardian-angel he lacks no longer ;

Evil fortune he need not fear :
Fate is strong, but love is stronger ;

And my love is truer than angel-care."

As Charlotte and Emily tramped the moors " to the damage of
their shoes, but the benefit of their health," Charlotte told her
sister of her sorrow and anguish, and Emily had to bear with
her for nearly two years. We read in her letter, dated Novem-
ber, 1845, " I have denied myself absolutely the pleasure of
speaking about you — even to Emily ; but I have been able
to conquer neither my regrets nor my impatience." It is easy
to understand Charlotte's never-ending sorrow for the loss of
Emily, for it was she who comforted and bore with her during
this wretched time. If Charlotte wrote down her dreams,
and Emily wrote of her deliriums during her illness, no wonder
Charlotte said on preparing a new edition of Withering Heights
that, on looking over the papers, they left her prostrate and
caused her sleepless nights.

A year and a half after Charlotte's miserable home-coming,
Branwell was dismissed in July, 1845, and he returned to
Haworth frantically mad for the love of Mrs. Robinson. He
had been at Thorpe Green two and a half years, though in
the Preface to Emily Bronte's Complete Poems, it is stated

A LIVE DOCUMENT 347

under date March, 1844, " Bran well got worse and worse,
drinking heavily to excess," which is quite untrue.

Here was Emily, the patient housekeeper, with a love-sick
brother and sister, both incapable of controlling their thoughts
or feelings. It is not surprising that Charlotte said that Ellis
Bell would wonder what was meant, and suspect the com-
plainant of affectation if they could not believe the scenes
pictured in Wuihering Heights. We see Emily trying to
comfort both Charlotte and Bran well, and yet keeping her own
counsel. In a letter now privately printed by Mr. Wise,
Charlotte says she could bear to let Anne go because she seemed
to belong to God ; but she wanted to hold Emily back when
she died, and she felt that for years afterwards.

Emily's spirit seemed strong enough to bear her to fulness
of years, and Charlotte never ceased to mourn for her.

It becomes necessary to find some reason for Emily writing,
at white heat, Wuihering Heights — a live doc amen t. Surely
it was because she could not help herself. She heard Char-
lotte's passionate story, and she most probably heard the
record of her dreams and knew of her pitiful letters. Lucy
Snowe tells of sending letters to Paul Emanuel, but before she
sent them she wrote another version for herself, and in those
long, sleepless nights of 1844 and 1845 Charlotte probably
wrote her thoughts.

It seems quite probable that Charlotte Bronte did write her
passionate thoughts which have found their way into Wuthering
Heights, and afterwards she discarded them. Possibly, they
told too much, for in her poems — Frances, Apostacy, Gilbert,
and the long poem in The Professor, she tells her heart's
secrets without any reserve. Did she first write her thoughts
in prose ? She was the soul of truth and could not conceal
her feelings. As more and more of her life is revealed,
we see how that life is reflected in her novels. In her preface
to Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte says, " Nor is even the
first heroine of the name (Cathy) destitute of a certain strange
beauty in her fierceness, or of honesty in the midst of perverted
passion and passionate perversity." In after years Charlotte
probably saw her infatuation as such.

348 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Over and over again, Wuthering Heights has been described
as a dream, a nightmare, and certain scenes are veritable
nightmares. Mrs. Humphry Ward calls it a baseless
nightmare. Now we know that Charlotte, like Cathy, did
actually have dreams and fever : that, like Cathy, she was
delirious : that she resembled Caroline Helstone, who, when ill,
was pining for Robert Gerard Moore : and like Jane Eyre, who
longed for Rochester, when ill at Morton, after leaving Thorn-
field, it is easy to see that there was some foundation for the
character of Cathy. If Cathy owes something to Charlotte
then there is only M. Heger for Heathcliff, who undoubtedly
is a different type of lover from Rochester, Moore, or Paul
Emanuel, although all are drawn from the same original.
Some of the scenes in Wuthering Heights were suggested to
Emily Bronte by what she saw in her own home.

It is hardly fair to say that Emily's genius was entirely
introspective, for the one novel breathes the very atmosphere
she was surrounded by in 1844-46. It was the passionate

(intensity of vision which moved her to write her masterpiece.
What she saw she felt compelled to transmit, and the emotion
that is felt by the reader of certain passages in Wuthering
Heights must have been felt in greater intensity by Emily
Bronte when she was writing her novel. , Like Byron she
possessed

" A fount of fiery life
Which served for a Titanic strife " ;

and as Charlotte says of this best beloved sister whom she
addressed as " Mine bonnie love " — " having formed these
beings, she did not know what she had done."

It is probable that Emily and Charlotte occupied the same
bedroom. The present rector of Ha worth thinks that the
tiny room over the passage, which was said to be Emily's,
could scarcely have been used as a bedroom, as it is only ten
feet by five ; in any case, if Emily did not sleep in the same
room, she would certainly have to nurse Charlotte in her
illness, for Charlotte was ill during 1844-45. Emily, good
and faithful, would keep old Tabby away as much as possible.

SYDNEY DOBELL'S CRITIQUE 349

It would not be too much to say that the two sisters agreed
to write a novel, Emily writing of Charlotte and an
imaginary lover and Charlotte writing of Emily and Crims-
worth, which for the nonce represented M. Heger, as the
conversations relating to the devoirs are certainly founded
on actual remarks made on Emily's work at Brussels, for both
sisters put into their novels much of their own life. In the
light of the recently published Bronte letters in The Times,
it is certainly remarkable that Sydney Dobell should say in
the Palladium in 1850, " Let her (the author) rejoice if she can
again give us such an elaboration of a rare and fearful form of
mental disease — so terribly strong, so exquisitely subtle —
with such nicety in its transitions, such intimate symptomatic
truth in its details, as to be at once a psychological and medical
study. It has been said of Shakespeare, that he drew cases
which the physician might study ; Currer Bell has done no
less." This critique was written when the writer insisted
that Withering Heights was written by Charlotte Bronte,
and it is an open question whether she did write down her
dreams and nightmares. Seeing that it was Charlotte Bronte
who had fever and delirium, and that, according to her letter
to M. Heger, she pined away, would it be possible for her to
remember the thoughts passing through her mind ? Does
not this fact point to Emily as the nurse who takes Nelly
Dean's place, and records the deliriums ?

Sydney Dobell, in answering Charlotte Bronte, suggests a
double entente, but the scenes in Withering Heights and Jane
Eyre, which are similar, are not to be compared for passion,
though the fact that Charlotte was delirious accounts for
some of the scenes which she may have copied from Withering
Heights, which are given by Emily. Compare the case of
Cathy in the locked and haunted room with Jane Eyre under
similar circumstances ; it is quite possible for Emily to be
in the place of Nelly Dean and to be able to tell the tale quite
graphically, and at the same time for Charlotte to relate
it in Jane Eyre as it appeared to her. Charlotte Bronte
admits to M. Heger in one of her letters, " Day and night I
find neither rest nor peace. If I sleep I am disturbed by

350 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

tormenting dreams, in which I see you always severe, always
grave, always incensed against me," and, in a letter to Mr.
Williams commenting on Thackeray's genius, Charlotte Bronte
says, " he borrows nothing from fever ; his is never the energy
of delirium." Surely it was a dream when Heathcliff visited
Cathy just before her death ; only a woman in the throes of
delirium would hold a lover down and say " I wish I could

hold you till we were both dead ! I shouldn't care

what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why
shouldn't you suffer ? " " I do ! Will you forget me ? Will
you be happy when I am in the earth ? Will you say twenty
years hence, ' That's the grave of Catherine Earnshaw ?
I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her ; but it is
passed. I have loved many others since : my children are
dearer to me than she was ; and, at death, I shall not rejoice
that I am going to her : I shall be sorry that I must leave
them ! ' Will you say so, Heathcliff ? " There is a scene in
Shirley based on this dream in the chapter on The Valley of
the Shadow of Death, and the author says : "I was appalled
and dared not rise to seek pencil and paper by the dim
watchlight." Charlotte, in her recently published letters, tells
of writing to ease her suffering, but, as she had been warned to
tone down her letters, she writes her highly strung thoughts
in solitude for herself. In Chapter XII, there is Cathy's three
days' fast and her fever which point to the ravings of delirium.
A dreaming mind is said to be a powerful although a primitive
mind, and, if all dreams are based on a wish, it is easy to see
the origin of Charlotte's dreams at this time.

Nightmare has been denned as the suppression of an urgent
wish ; if this definition is correct, then it is easy to trace
Charlotte Bronte's nightmares during the year 1844 and
1845, when she was regretting having left M. Heger and longing
to see him, if only for a moment. It is thus plain to see why
Wuthering Heights has been attributed to Charlotte Bronte,
and why she said she possessed no real claim to it. Parts of the
novel are based on her dreams, nightmares, fevers and her
infatuation for M. Heger, but Emily was the nurse just as
Nelly Dean was to Cathy ; and just as Cathy told her dreams

THE HAWORTH WORKSHOP 351

to Nelly and she in turn related them to Lockwood, so Charlotte
Bronte told her dreams to Emily who wove them into her novel,
though the effect of this pitiful state of Charlotte urged
Emily to create a cruel Heathcliff. Added to this is Emily's
own experience. Charlotte tells us that Wuthering Heights
was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely
materials.

The wild workshop was the Haworth parsonage on the
desolate moors, and the homely materials Emily found in her
own home. " He (Ellis Bell) wrought with a rude chisel, and
from no model but the vision of his meditations." Well
might Charlotte Bronte use the word meditations rather than
imaginations. Emily, the brave visionary, saw power and
strength in Charlotte's and Bran well's infatuation, but she
also saw the evil that a passionate, selfish spirit could accom-
plish, because it could not have its own way and realise its
own ardent wish. Because Heathcliff could not possess
Cathy, body and soul, he trampled on every human being
that came in his way, and took his revenge by destroying all
who had in any way opposed him.

' I seek no revenge on you,' replied Heathcliff less
vehemently. ' That's not the plan. The tyrant grinds
down his slaves and they don't turn against him ; they crush
those beneath them.' " There is much expressed by Emily
here.

The character of Heathcliff was not to Charlotte Bronte's
liking, and it is possible that, if Emily had used him again,
she would have toned down some of the traits in his character.
Emily had her own troubles, but she sacrificed herself in her
efforts to comfort other members of the family.

Wuthering Heights has been described by Mr. Dobell as
" the unformed writing of a giant's hand ; the large utterance
of a baby god." Had he known Emily Bronte he would have
recognised how well his words applied to her, rather than to
Charlotte. Although he did not quite understand Charlotte's
disclaimer, he wrote asking her to visit him and his wife in
their home near Cheltenham, saying, " We will talk over
Wuthering Heights together, and I will ask you to tell me

352 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

everything you can remember of its wonderful author. I
see how freely I may speak to you of my estimate of her
genius." He would not have pressed her to discuss Emily's
novel, if he had known that it contained records of the darkest
time of her life when she was writing to M. Heger, and that
is just the part that puzzled Sydney Dobell. " I shall not
re-read this letter. I send it as I have written it. Neverthe-
less, I have a hidden consciousness that some people, cold and
common sense in reading it would say — ' She is talking
nonsense.' I would avenge myself on such persons in no other
way than by wishing them one single day of the torments
which I have suffered for eight months. We should then see
if they would not talk nonsense, too." So writes Charlotte
to M. Heger in November, 1845. And again " One suffers
in silence so long as one has the strength so to do, and when
that strength gives out one speaks without too carefully
measuring one's words." That is the passionate Cathy,
with her torments and her unbridled tongue in Wuthering
Heights, as Emily describes her.

What makes a hero, is less the deeds of the figure chosen
than the understanding sympathy of the artist with the
figure. Emily Bronte had loved, but the loved one was
beyond her. Whether it was an ideal or a person matters not ;
her passion soars beyond that of any other woman writer.
At times she seems choked in expressing herself. It has been
said there is no language for spirits, but Emily Bronte
approached as near as any writer in the conversation between
Cathy and Heathcliff ; it was spirit speaking to spirit.
Charlotte Bronte attempted a similar task, but never attained
the same heights, though Jane Eyre said to Rochester, " It
is my spirit that addresses your spirit, just as if both had passed
through the grave and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we
are ! "

Hate is a source of inspiration just as love is, and it has been
responsible for many works of creative genius. Shelley's
poems owed much to his hatred of tyranny and conventionality.
Granted that Emily Bronte saw in M. Heger an ideal, when she
found that Charlotte's passion for him was treated with

CHARLOTTE'S PREFACE TO THE NOVEL 353

contempt and that Bran well's mad love for Mrs. Robinson
made him an object of derision, she may have been inspired
to make Heathcliff as the type of a passionate lover, brutal
and unforgiving ; and yet his end is his longing for Heaven —
his union with Cathy. " O God ! It is a long fight, I wish
it were over ! " — and later when death draws near he exclaims,
" I'm too happy, and yet I'm not happy enough. My soul's
bliss kills my body, but does not satisfy itself." It may be
asked finally why Emily Bronte created such a character as
Heathcliff to mate with Cathy, since, with his fierce passion,
he killed the woman he loved. Charlotte answers this question
in the preface to Wuthering Heights where she says the writer
who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he
is not always master, something which at times strangely
wills and works for itself ; and in support of this she quotes
from Job xxxix 10, where it says : " Canst thou bind the
unicorn with his band in the furrow ? or will he harrow the
valleys after thee ? " She also makes use of verse 7 : " He
scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the
crying of the driver." Wuthering Heights is the outcome of
a great mind ; it is not meant for human enjoyment or human
opposition. It is there, and we may take it or leave it.

In Charlotte Bronte's novels the love of the woman is always'
greater than that of the man, and the heroines Jane Eyre,
Caroline Helstone, and Lucy Snowe long for love first, but in
Emily's there is equality in the love. Charlotte refers to this
in her preface, when she says Ellis Bell could never be
brought to comprehend that faithfulness and clemency, long-
suffering and loving-kindness, which are esteemed virtues
in the daughters of Eve, become foibles in the sons of Adam.

The intensity of the passion between Heathcliff and Cathy
leaves the readers with the firm conviction that it is immortal,
so beautifully expressed in the concluding words of the novel.
" I lingered round them, under that benign sky ; watched the
moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to
the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered
how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the
sleepers in that quiet earth."

354 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

And we hear Cathy's voice twenty years after her death as
given in the third chapter —

" * Let me in — let me in ! '

" ' Who are you ? ' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to
disengage myself.

" ' Catherine Lin ton,' it replied '. I'm come home :

I'd lost my way on the moor ! ' "

And in the last chapter we see the boy on the moor with
" a sheep and two lambs before him : he was crying terribly ;
' what is the matter, my little man ? ' I asked.

" ' There's Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t' Nab,'
he blubbered, ' un I darnut pass 'em. '

" I saw nothing ; but neither the sheep nor he would go on ;
so I bid him take the road lower down."

As the story begins with one spirit crying to another in
distress, it appropriately ends with the two who haunt the
moors together for evermore, y

CHAPTER XXV

CHARLOTTE AND ANNE BRONTE'S VISIT TO LONDON

DEATH OF BRANWELL AND

EMILY BRONTE

ANNE BRONTE and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall — Branwell Bronte
and Anne's second novel — Charlotte and Anne Bronte visit London
— They stay at the Chapter Coffee House — Interview with the
publishers — Visit to the Opera — Death of Branwell and Emily
Bronte.

ALTHOUGH of the members of the family at Haworth parsonage
Anne Bronte had the least claim to genius — though, if she had
not been overshadowed by her sisters, she might have ranked
higher — such was her delight on the acceptance by the pub-
lishers of Agnes Grey that she set to work on a second novel.
Mr. Newby, the publisher, remarked that he considered
Wuthering Heights a dreadful book, and it seems that Agnes
Grey was the first of the trio of novels to get accepted.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was probably the first temperance
novel, and it was written with a purpose. Charlotte Bronte
loved to act as censor, and she considered that the subject
was not by any means suitable for her sister to deal with, but
Anne was determined, and she wrote from a most conscien-
tious motive. Some of the reviewers found much fault with
this novel ; it was considered exaggerated, which Anne Bronte
denied in the preface of the second edition. She affirmed that
the story was true enough, though she admitted that the
profligate — the principal character, " Arthur Huntingdon " —
was an extreme case. " I wished to tell the truth, for truth
always conveys its own moral." Charlotte Bronte says that
the choice of subject was an entire mistake, though the motives
which dictated this choice were pure. " She (Anne Bronte)
had, in the course of her life, been called on to contemplate
near at hand, and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents
misused, and faculties abused. . . . She brooded over it,
till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail

355

356 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

(of course with fictitious characters, incidents and situations)
as a warning to others."

It is a pity that whenever a bad character appears in a
Bronte novel, or one of the characters appears in an unfavour-
able light, either in speech or action, poor Bran well should get
the credit of being the original. Almost every writer on the
Brontes attributes Huntingdon and his vices to Bran well
Bronte. The Haworth friends, who knew the best as well as
the worst of Branwell, emphatically denied it, and it is certain
that Charlotte Bronte's allusion to the characters in The
Tenant of Wild fell Hall has been misunderstood. Anne
Bronte would never have betrayed her only brother by por-
traying him as a drunken profligate ; she was too loyal to her
home to expose any member in this manner, and, moreover,
it is incomprehensible how anyone can for a moment think
that a married man, such as Huntingdon is portrayed, could
ever be said to have had an original in Branwell Bronte.

Charlotte's remarks apply to a Mr. C , a curate near

Haworth, of whom she writes in a letter to Ellen Nussey —

" Mrs. C came here the other day, with a most melan-
choly tale of her wretched husband's drunken, extravagant,
profligate habits. . . .

" I am morally certain no decent woman could experience

anything but aversion towards such a man as Mr. . Before

I knew, or suspected his character, and when I rather wondered
at his versatile talents, I felt it in an uncontrollable degree.
I hated to talk with him — hated to look at him ; though as I
was not certain that there was substantial reason for such a
dislike, and thought it absurd to trust to mere instinct, I both
concealed and repressed the feeling as much as I could ; and,
on all occasions, treated him with as much civility as I was
mistress of. I was struck with Mary's * expression of a similar
feeling at first sight ; she said, when we left him, ' That is a
hideous man, Charlotte ! ' I thought ' he is indeed.' '

The Squire, Mr. Lawrence* in Wildfell Hall and Heathcliff in
Wuthering Heights have something in common, both being
1 Mary Taylor.

THE TENANT OF WILD FELL HALL 357

accused of " excessive reserve " and " an aversion to showy
displays of feeling."

When Mr. Newby accepted The Tenant of Wildfell Hall he
sold the sheets of the novel to an American publisher, and
caused it to be understood that the story was by the author
of Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey, thus creating the impression
that the three novels were written by the same person. Messrs.
Smith, Elder & Co., Charlotte Bronte's publishers, had arranged
to sell the sheets of her next novel to a certain publisher in
America, but when The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was advertised
as by the author of Jane Eyre, the American publishers at
once asked Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. for an explanation.
They in turn wrote to Ha worth parsonage, and caused such a
commotion in that quiet household, that Charlotte quickly
arranged to take Anne with her to London in order to " con-
front Newby with the lie," after taking the advice of Mr.
George Smith. Charlotte Bronte was always careful not to
offend Messis. Smith, Elder & Co., who had treated her in a
manner so different from the publishers with whom Emily
and Anne had had to deal. The hurried preparations, the
walk on a July day through a thunderstorm from the vicarage
to Keighley — a hard four mile walk — a railway journey from
Keighley to Leeds, and then a night journey to London had
sufficient excitement to suit Charlotte immensely. Anne,
however, was quiet and serene, and probably slept during the
night travel. Charlotte had been interested in London when
she had passed through on her way to and from Brussels,
and the chance of visiting it again, even when on an unpleasant
errand, satisfied her love of change and excitement.

The arrival at Euston at seven o'clock on that Saturday
morning afforded something for Anne to look back upon, for
she had never been out of Yorkshire before. The two sisters
went straight to Charlotte's old quarters at the Chapter Coffee
House in Paternoster Row. The proprietor was doubtless
surprised to see two quaintly dressed country women asking
if they could have breakfast and lodgings for the week-end.
After a meal, they meant to get a cab to Cornhill, but in their
confusion they managed to cross the road and walk to number

358 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

65 Cornhill ; Mr. Smith tells us it occupied nearly an hour
to cover the half-mile.

It is an old story how they walked into what was apparently
a bookseller's shop, and asked for Mr. George Smith. After
waiting a while, they were received by the busy editor, and
Charlotte placed in his hand the letter which he had sent her.
Mutual recognition resulted, and it was now Mr. Smith's turn
to become excited : " You wrote Jane Eyre'' he exclaimed,
looking at the little woman. Charlotte laughed at Mr. Smith's
question, and admitted the authorship, and after " talk,
talk, talk," they found their way back to the Chapter Coffee
House. In the evening Mr. Smith called upon them, accom-
panied by his mother, his sisters and Mr. Williams, and it was
decided that the whole party should go to the Opera to see
The Barber of Seville.

Charlotte was elated at the prospect, while Anne was quiet
and composed, as she always was, so Charlotte tells us.
Charlotte, on the other hand, was all excitement, and she found
it necessary to take a strong dose of sal-volatile before entering
the carriage with her visitors.

Mr. Williams remembered Charlotte Bronte saying : " You
know I am not accustomed to this kind of thing," as she leaned
on his arm when ascending the steps of the Opera House.

Mary Taylor received a good and detailed account from
Charlotte Bronte, which Mrs. Gaskell published.

The sisters refused to accept an invitation to stay with
Mr. Smith's mother at 4 Westbourne Place, Bishop's Road,
preferring to be independent. Charlotte loved the stir and
bustle of the City, and in Villette she says —

" Since those days, I have seen the West End, the parks,
the fine squares ; but I love the City far better. The City
seems so much more in earnest ; its business, its rush, its roar
are such serious things, sights, sounds. The City is getting its
living — the West End but enjoying its pleasure. At the West
End you maybe amused, but in the City you are deeply excited."

The sisters had to pass through Kensington Gardens on their
way to the home of Mr. Williams, where they took tea. They

CHARLOTTE AND ANNE BRONTE VISIT LONDON 359

were struck by " the beauty of the scene, the fresh verdure
of the turf, and the soft rich masses of foliage," and still more
were they struck by the soft and varied intonation of the
voices of the people in the South compared with the rough and
blunt speech of the North.

This visit to London was the subject of much conversation
for a long time in the Haworth vicarage, and when some years
afterwards Martha Brown, the servant, had an opportunity
of visiting London, she was much interested in Paternoster
Row and the Chapter Coffee House as well as the publishing
firm in Cornhill. She had assured Charlotte Bronte that she
should visit the two latter places and tell them that she came
from Haworth parsonage. " You never will, Martha ! " said
Charlotte. " But I will," replied Martha, in her broad York-
shire, and her sister, Mrs. Ratcliffe, affirmed that she carried
out her intention in part by making herself known at the
Chapter Coffee House to the waiter, whilst at Cornhill she was
content with seeing the young man behind the counter on
which were books, some of which had " Currer Bell " on the
cover. Her courage failed, however, and she did not dare
to ask for the head of the firm, which very much amused
Charlotte Bronte.

After the two sisters had returned to Haworth, Charlotte
worked hard at Shirley. Mrs. Gaskell does not tell us much
that happened when Charlotte and Anne visited Mr. Newby,
but Mary Taylor, in one of her letters, says : " What did Newby
say when he met the real Ellis Bell ? " x which is strange, seeing
that it was Currer and Acton that went to see him. The matter
was left mainly in the hands of Mr. George Smith, who was
not successful in obtaining the money due to the Bronte
sisters, Emily and Anne.

Branwell was causing trouble in the home, and the sisters
were keeping the secret of their authorship not only from him,
but also from their friends. Whilst in London they adopted
the name of Brown, and they were determined that the secret
should not leak out through them. It was about this time,

1 Evidently an error as in her next letter she refers to Emily as the
author of Wuthering Heights.

360 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

when Branwell was drinking heavily, that he narrowly escaped
with his life. Having gone to bed drunk, he managed to set
his bedclothes on fire, and Charlotte, passing the bedroom,
saw the flames and called to Emily, who quickly threw water
over the bed and partly dragged and partly carried Branwell
to her own room. It was all a matter of a few moments, and
after giving up her own bed she contented herself with the
couch in the dining-room, the one on which she breathed her last.
That horsehair sofa is still in use in Bradford, though, when
I last saw it, it was in a house near the vicarage at Haworth.

Mr. Clement Shorter has questioned this incident, which Miss
Robinson first mentioned in her monograph on Emily Bronte,
but the account is quite true. The story was confirmed by
Dr. Ingham, the Haworth doctor who attended some of the
members of the Bronte family. As Mr. Bronte was still living
when Mrs. Gaskell collected her information, Dr. Ingham did not
volunteer any details about the family, though he was able after-
wards to point out several errors in the Life of Charlotte Bronte.

Branwell Bronte's health was completely undermined by
his drinking habits, and in fact he was slowly dying of consump-
tion. Mrs. Ratcliffe told me that he became a mere skeleton.
She well remembers the last time he was in her father's house,
when she and her sisters were teasing him because his clothes
hung on him so loosely ; they asked him if he had got his
father's coat on. Poor fellow ! he was dead two days after-
wards. John Brown, the sexton, went to see him in his bed-
room on the day that he died, and he affirmed that Branwell
did not die standing up, as stated by Mrs. Gaskell. From
what the father told Mr. Brown, Branwell lost all his bravado ;
he raised himself a little, as the last paroxysm came on, just
before he died, and was very penitent and prayed for forgive-
ness from all the members of the family. He whispered
" Amen " after his father had prayed by the bedside.

Haworth mourned for this misguided brother, for with all
his faults he was a favourite. In his early days, much was
expected of the brilliant youth, who, it was hoped, would hand
down the name of Bronte to future generations as one worthy
of being remembered.

DEATH OF BRAN WELL BRONTE 361

According to the old servants, Emily mourned most for the
brother. " She died of a broken heart for love of her brother
Branwell," said Martha Brown's sister. She realised what
he might have been, had he been trained and guided aright.
Charlotte seemed surprised that Branwell should have died
so soon, but Emily, who waited for him, night after night,
probably knew that the end was not far off. She was the only
sister who wrote stanzas to his memory. Charlotte had lost
patience with him and, if Haworth tales are to be believed,
she did not speak to him for weeks together before his death.
Anne, like Emily, pitied him ; she writes of his illness and of
his having much tribulation when at Thorpe Green, and, like
Emily, she hoped " He would be better, and do better in the
future."

The funeral was the first after the aunt's death. All the
family attended, as well as the Browns, and a neighbouring
clergyman. Emily went back to the house broken-hearted ;
she was present at the funeral service on the following Sunday,
and that was the last time she was out of doors. It was
September, and a cold on the chest developed lung trouble.
At all costs a doctor should have been consulted, whether she
agreed or not. Charlotte's pitiful appeal to Mr. Williams for
help and advice is sad reading, but it needed a stronger will
than Charlotte's to deal with Emily. What the father was
thinking of is a puzzle, but Emily was considered to be the
strong member of the family. When Tabby was old and feeble,
it was Emily who took her place in the early morning, and it
was she who traversed the moors in all sorts of weather with
her dogs at her heels.

Charlotte and Anne had a sad time during the illness of
Emily, who seemed to be a fatalist, and was prepared to suffer
rather than yield and consult a doctor. In early December
Charlotte searched the moors for one sprig of heather, however
faded, but Emily was too ill to appreciate it. The old servants
said that she dreaded giving trouble ; she had great faith in
her own strong will power. Well might she write in her
Last Lines, " No coward soul is mine."

There are few more pathetic scenes described in literature

362 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

than that of Emily Bronte in her dying moments. Getting
out of bed, she tried to comb her hair before the fire, but such
was her weakness that the comb fell from her hand into the
fire. Martha Brown was near, and the poor, dying Emily
gasped, " See, Martha, my comb has fallen into the fire, and I
cannot get it." Martha picked it up and recognised that
Emily had not long to live. After dressing herself she was
quite exhausted and remarked, " I will see a doctor now,"
but it was too late ; she leaned on the couch and passed
quietly away. The brave, heroic spirit was quenched, and
Charlotte and Anne, with the old father, had to suffer another
and a greater bereavement.

There is not the slightest doubt that Emily might have
lived longer if she had received medical aid in time, but " while
full of ruth for others, on herself she had no pity."

The old comb, with a piece burnt out, that fell from Emily's
grasp, is now in my possession. It was the last thing that
Emily held, and, when she could no longer retain it in her hand,
she realised that she was meeting death, of which she had so
often written.

Haworth had scarcely recovered from the shock of BranwelPs
death, when the old church bell tolled for Emily, the pride
of the family, and the willing helper of the old servants. She
whom none had quite understood was taken from them, and
the parsonage had lost its most helpful inmate. There are
no letters of Anne's to show her grief, but, if Charlotte missed
the sister " who made the sunshine of her life," what must Anne
have felt, to whom Emily had been as a second mother ? Anne
was frail and timid, though brave, as all the Bronte's were, but
Emily was always ready to shield and defend her. The little
gate of death at the end of the garden had once more to be
unlocked to permit of another sad procession to wind its way
through to the church. The poor, broken-hearted father,
Charlotte, Anne, the servants and the curate, Mr. Nicholls,
were there. The whole village gathered round the grave ;
it was pitiful that Emily — the Major, as she was called, because
of her smart, soldierly bearing — should so soon have followed
Bran well to his last, long home.

DEATH OF EMILY BRONTE 363

" As the old bereaved father and his two surviving children
followed the coffin to the grave, they were joined by Keeper,
Emily's fierce, faithful bull-dog. He walked alongside of the
mourners, and into the church, and stayed quietly there all
the time that the burial service was being read. When he
came home, he lay down at Emily's chamber door, and howled
pitifully for many days."

Charlotte Bronte's letters at this time are sad reading :
there is no rebellion. She would know fiom Emily's poetry
that death was welcome to this child of nature. Her poems
are full of an ache for the release of the spirit ; the body seemed
to clog it, and it may be that she longed for rest and welcomed
death. The date of her poem entitled Death is 1843, the year
after she left Brussels. If Emily Bronte could have chosen
her grave, it would not have been in the cold, damp church,
but on the wild moors.

" DEATH.
Death ! that struck when I was most confiding

In my certain faith of joy to be —
Strike again, Time's withered branch dividing
From the fresh root of Eternity !

Strike it down, that other boughs may flourish
Where that perished sapling used to be ;

Thus, at least, its mouldering corpse will nourish
That from which it springs — Eternity."

Charlotte tells how, as Emily's physical strength diminished,
mentally she grew stronger. " Day by day, when I saw with
what a front she met suffering, I looked on her with an anguish
of wonder and love." Emily Bronte's Last Lines must have
been written at this time.

" No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere ;

I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity !

Life — that in me has rest,
As I — undying Life — have power in Thee !

364 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BRONTES

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts : unutterably vain ;

Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idle froth amid the boundless main.

To waken doubt in one,
Holding so fast by Thine infinity ;

So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years,

Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,

And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom nor his might could render void ;

Thou— THOU art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed."

Much as Charlotte felt the loss, she tried to be resigned.
" Emily suffers no more from pain or weakness now. She will
never

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